Next to Bush and Cheney, no one has poisoned American politics - and hurt America in every possible way - more than Karl Rove. So why has Saint John McCain embraced him?

Karl Rove, the president’s top political hand since his Texas days, recently gave money to McCain and soon after had a private conversation with the senator. A top McCain adviser said both Mehlman and Rove are now informally advising the campaign. Rove refused to detail his conversation with McCain.

It's easy to see Rove's evil handiwork on behalf of McCain, for example the Canadian story about alleged Obama-Clinton doubletalk on NAFTA.

It's also hysterical to see Rove on FOX TV praising McCain for adopting a starving Bangladeshi child - the same child Rove featured in a nasty South Carolina push poll that proved decisive in giving Bush the nomination:

Rove invented a uniquely injurious fiction for his operatives to circulate via a phony poll. Voters were asked, “Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain…if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?” This was no random slur. McCain was at the time campaigning with his dark-skinned daughter, Bridget, adopted from Bangladesh.

If John McCain had any character, he'd never speak to the man who spread that lie. (If McCain were a Founding Father, he'd have challenged Rove to a duel.) But now he's hugging him, just as he's hugging Rove's boss, George Bush.

It wasn't always so. Here's what happened during the 2000 debate in South Carolina:

During a commercial break, Bush grasped McCain's hands and made a sugary plea for less acrimony in their campaign. When McCain pointed out that Bush's allies were savaging him in direct-mail and phone campaigns, Bush played the innocent. "Don't give me that shit," McCain growled, pulling away. "And take your hands off me."

I can't wait until a reporter asks him about that.

Update 1: Here's a fantastic cartoon video about McCain's "endorsement" of Bush in 2004.