Washington ? Karl Rove better hope that some of the old wisdom no longer applies.

I’m thinking particularly of the observation that “those whom the gods would destroy, they first make famous.”

This presidential counselor is on his way to becoming very famous — two books detailing his life and activities published in the past six months and innumerable magazine articles, the most recent a characteristically insightful New Yorker profile by Nicholas Lemann.

We are three generations past the time when scholar Louis Brownlow advised that those who staff the president should have “a passion for anonymity.” In that time, White House staffers from FDR’s Louis Howe to Bill Clinton’s Leon Panetta have become at least vaguely familiar to newspaper readers.

None, so far as I know, have drawn his own biographers even while remaining on the presidential payroll, and most — but not all — have had the decency to delay their memoirs until their boss has left office.

But Rove has offered his cooperation and made time available for journalists and authors who have approached him with the goal in mind, not of gaining insights into President Bush, but to tell and retell the saga of the consultant who helped put him in the White House.

Let me disclose my own bias in this matter. I like Karl Rove. In the days when he was operating from Austin, we had many long and rewarding conversations. I have eaten quail at his table and admired the splendid Hill Country landscape from the porch of the historic cabin Karl and his wife, Darby, found miles away and had carted to its present site on their land.

In the spring of 1996, when Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution and I were assembling a cast of American politicians to address a group of 40 emerging political leaders from Western Europe, the former Soviet bloc, Asia and Africa, I suggested we invite Karl Rove to be one of the instructors.

The ultimate purpose of the Salzburg Seminar in Austria was to illuminate the emerging forces in U.S. politics. Rove, though hardly a celebrity (as compared to Susan Estrich, former Dukakis campaign manager, or Ralph Reed, then of the Christian Coalition), clearly qualified on two grounds.

One was that he had recently guided George W. Bush to his first-ever political victory in the Texas gubernatorial race. I thought there was a reasonable chance that the international players would be hearing more from Bush and Rove in the years to come.

The other reason for inviting Rove was his wealth of information on the forces shaping the biggest single change in American politics — the emergence of the Republican South. I had heard him discourse on this topic over coffee in Austin, and I knew he was, in odd hours, working on a Ph.D. thesis on that subject at the LBJ School at the University of Texas.

He did not disappoint. Probably the least well known of the “faculty” members, his lectures and discussion sessions were among the best rated.

Our contacts continued after that, with great frequency during the 2000 primaries and general election, and much less frequently since he moved into the White House. Even now, he generally tries to return calls in the same week — if not day — they are placed.

I tell you all this as a preliminary to saying I think Rove is treading on dangerous ground. Because others in the tight inner circle around Bush are either self-effacing (as is the case with Chief of Staff Andy Card) or have very well-defined responsibilities (as with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice) or are caught in a revolving door (the economic team), it is very easy for the outside world to assume that almost everything Bush does is Rove’s handiwork. Nick Lemann refers to this phenomenon as “the Mark of Rove” and clearly recognizes its dangers.

Voters assume — and willingly accept — that politics is part of the president’s job. But they would like to think that big policies — tax cuts, for example, or a war with Iraq — are being made on their merits. When the public learned that well-publicized political consultants James Carville and Paul Begala were at the White House table arguing the first Clinton economic plan with Lloyd Bentsen and Bob Rubin, it did not sit well.

Democrats are only too happy to help Rove hype his own role in this White House. Who put him in charge? they ask. Titles like “Bush’s Brain,” given to one of the biographies, feed that perception.

Rove is at the point where a single leaked memo showing his hand in a controversial presidential action could make him vulnerable. And if that happens, it won’t be the president who has to step aside.

David Broder is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.