Be prepared! Find the bastards. And pile on!

That's Karl Rove (and, apparently, the 11th Armoured Cavalry) in a nutshell.

While Vanity Fair and the Conde-nasties prefer him as 'the principal architect behind the disastrous Bush presidency', no one can deny him the qualities he attaches to himself in this piece - energy, precision.

But if Rove is the draughtsman of disaster, what of the Democrats? Are the kingmakers in Blue so much better, so much cleaner?

Mark Penn is political architect for the Democrats. He's a complicated individual with complicated relationships to manage.

But setting that to one side, it seems Penn may have many more fallibilities than Rove. The pot-hole politics that won New York for Hillary drove her to the very gates of disaster in the opening primaries.

But Mark Penn is a clever guy. He nailed staff at Bobballs pretty good.

• The number of left-handed people in America has doubled in two generations. This certainly means new business opportunities for the makers of everything from Blackberrys to can openers, but it also says something profound about the new liberal trend in American parenting.

The Microtrends theory is great. Forbes quotes Mark's book, saying that "the rational side of people is far more powerful in many areas of life than the purely emotional side". Yet when Robbie blubbed, everyone went weak-kneed.

It's early days, we'll see how it all shakes out. Penn wasn't the only guy to get NH wrong. Everyone got it wrong. But at least John Harris and Jim VandeHei were good enough to apologize.

It's okay guys, it's all right. Come here, group hug...