From behind his desk in the White House, Karl Rove watched the Governor of New Jersey make the proclamation. He watched it on his VCR. Over and over. Forward and rewind, forward and rewind. “And so my truth is that I am a gay American.” It was music to his ears. Rove turned to a thick stack of polling data from Ohio, peering at toplines and crosstabs. Digging his index finger into data as if taking its pulse. Concentrating that famous encyclopedic mind of the American political landscape. And not just the landscape as a whole, but specific zip codes. Especially zip codes in swing districts of Ohio. Ohio was the battleground in this presidential election. Ohio, with its shallow pools of undecided and persuadable voters. Their values were a complicated grafting of incompatible principles. The self-described “evangelical moderate women” in the suburbs of Cleveland; the “national security Democrats” near Youngstown; the “family-values Blacks who support social spending”
