Clinton/Rove vs Bush/Rove
UT2020: Yes, Liddy and especially Segretti were. CREEP was extraordinarily amateurish for an organization dedicated to the landslide re-election of the most Rovian President until Bill Clinton.
RogueBeaver. You have shown yourself to be a budding (or full-bloom) historian AND political scientist. So I'm not sure if your reference is meant to be literal, or ironic.

Certainly I am NO Bill Clinton fan. Not anymore. When the lab tests came back on that dress I totally lost any and all respect for that [Anatomically-Explicit Epithet].

But "Rovian"? I would have said "Kennedyesque", and in the WORST possible PERSONAL way. Ted Kennedy lying about Chappaquidik way (I'm one of those who hold to the theory he wasn't in the car when it went into the water).
Clinton spent most of the eight years between 1991 and 1999 dealing with an endless (and mostly bogus) series of political charges that kept him too busy to get any work done. You could do a good sized dissertation just on the PROVABLY (that is, you can actually prove the NEGATIVE) false charges about the Clintons, never mind all the ones that had a kernel of truth (most lies do) or even those that represent substantial charges. In the end, it all came down to a lie about a semen stained dress.

Because ALL the other charges that Ken Starr's $70,000,000 investigation dug into came up with nothing. Whitewater (We lost $68,000 on that deal, what would they have done to us if we'd made money?-Hillary), Troopergate (disgruntled), Vince Foster's suicide (complete with note), Rose law firm files (delivered LATE but DELIVERED), Jennifer Flowers (truthful as it turns out, but she said Bill and she were meeting at a hotel that wouldn't be built for another six years, rendering her testimony useless), and finally Linda Tripp's ratfucking of Monica Lewinsky. It's no wonder Tripp works for her husband today. Who else would hire her?

Clinton's conspiracy was a conspiracy of one. Only he and he alone, IN the West Wing, knew the claims against him were true. I just don't see where "Rovian" comes into this.
I associate "Rovian" with a pathology of constant electoral politics where you are constantly running for office, running for re-election to that office, even running your boss' administration as IF there WERE another election coming when in fact the MAN is term-limited! The Bush Administration was run much like a Prime Ministership at least in the sense that you could lose power come friday afternoon! Rove actually sat in on meetings in the Situation Room dealing in matters of War and Peace, giving advice (To Colin Powell's exasperation) on the domestic political effects of their decisions! If there are more expanded definitions to "Rovian" than what happened with Nixon and Bush II, I haven't had it explained to me. I would appreciate it if you could do so, giving more details on Rove's activities that would expand the concept of the adjective. I have come to appreciate your views on 1950s to present day American political science.