IT'S A KARL ROVE WORLD... NOT REALLY

When Rove first came up with the idea of drumming up some sympathy for Bush-- and maybe a surge in his dismal job approval ratings-- by sending him down to Latin America to be filmed while people riot in the streets, I wasn't kidding. Today's Washington Post is bearing the predictions out already. Bush is unquestionably the most loathed man on the planet and from what I could tell from a recent trip to many of the countries Rove chose for him to visit, he's as hated south of the border as he is everywhere else.

Thousands of students, workers and environmentalists protesting President Bush's arrival here Thursday shut down a road in a central business district, and some clashed with helmet-wearing riot police who fired tear gas and beat demonstrators.

The boisterous rally and the sharp police response presaged a potentially volatile visit for the president, who landed here in the evening for a six-day tour through Latin America, his longest since taking office. Protesters also gathered Thursday in Colombia and Mexico, two later stops on Bush's itinerary, and organizers expect tens of thousands at a demonstration in Buenos Aires on Friday.

Here in the U.S., Rove has the toughest job yet, shaping a positive legacy for the man who is almost universally considered to be the worst president in the history of our country, someone who makes Nixon, Coolidge, Harding, Pierce and Buchanan look... not so bad. Zbigniew Brzezinski points out one reason why Rove's exertions will probably come to naught: whomever follows Bush into the White House "will have to make serious readjustments with rationality."


UPDATE: NOT ALL LATIN AMERICANS ARE REACTING VIOLENTLY TO BUSH'S VISIT

Mayan priests in Guatemala will purify a sacred site to eliminate "bad spirits" after Bush's visit.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

Other than that, though, everyone else is rioting and reacting violently, as Rove planned when he decided to send Bush down to countries where he's hated even more than in L.A., Chicago, Atlanta or New York.