Rove "Scoop" Remains Exclusive

As the phone inquiries continued through that Saturday night, Luskin says, "some of the reporters felt somewhat demeaned by having to call. It's the editors saying to them, 'I don't care what you think; call up and get some kind of response.' . . . The cumulative weight of all this malicious speculation is really disruptive."

While no other news organization touched the report, word spread through blogs and Internet sites. According to the Detroit Free Press, the keynote speaker at a banquet of Michigan trial lawyers announced the indictment, bringing the heavily Democratic audience to its feet.

Was a bit of impersonation involved as well? Corallo says a man identifying himself as London Sunday Times contributor Joe Lauria called about the story, which Corallo told him "borders on defamation." The man left what turned out to be a wrong number. After Leopold told a liberal blogger that Corallo had told him that the story bordered on defamation, Corallo reached Lauria, who acknowledged that he had dinner with Leopold days before the call.

Pulling the Strings

Joe Klein says some of his best friends have ruined politics.

They are the consultants, the behind-the-scenes geniuses (when they win) and idiots (when they lose) who, in many media accounts, are pulling their clients' strings like puppet masters.

But if the likes of Robert Shrum, Karl Rove, James Carville, Joe Trippi, Chris Lehane, Mark McKinnon, Tad Devine and the rest have sucked every last speck of candor and spontaneity out of the process, as the Time columnist contends, aren't journalists partly to blame for treating them as demigods?

"The reason is, they're so damn colorful," says Klein, who chastises the gunslingers-for-hire in his new book, "Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You're Stupid." "They're a lot of fun. That's why you find them clogging up the airwaves as well."

But it's more than that. The strategists, who are masters of spin, provide reporters with behind-the-scenes narratives about the inevitable campaign infighting.

For Klein to poke his finger in the eye of those who have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with him and countless other journalists is entirely in character. This is, after all, the guy who confounded his colleagues by writing the novel "Primary Colors" as "Anonymous" and not owning up to his authorship for several months.

Reporters and consultants make natural allies because they speak the same language. For journalists uncomfortable with making judgments about character, Klein says in an interview, "money raised, endorsements gotten and poll numbers are the be-all and end-all in politics."

Not that Klein is immune to consultant fever. In May 2002, as candidates were competing for Shrum's services, Klein wrote in Slate that "the first contest of 2004 will be the Shrum primary" -- and now admits that if Shrum signed onwith John Kerry, "I hoped for a fresh source of campaign information." (Once Shrum joined the Kerry camp, says Klein, he turned out to be a "lousy source.")

Klein credits the consultants with being savvy operatives but blames the presidential candidates for allowing these advisers to drain them of interesting thoughts. Kerry, he writes, ran "one of the most conventional, consultant-driven, market-tested campaigns imaginable." As for the president, "it's absolutely true of Bush as well, but they keep the secrets better," he says.