RE-RUN

So Karen Hughes and Karl Rove will be vying for power again. And Bush thinks this is a good thing. I wonder how many people will buy her silly book.

Ms. Hughes is stepping up her engagement with the president's re-election campaign just as she is beginning a six-week tour for a new book, "Ten Minutes From Normal," an autobiography that friends say paints a predictably glowing portrait of her longtime boss, the president of the United States.

To the relief of Bush aides who acknowledge that the White House has been on the political defensive since January, the memoir hits bookstores Tuesday, the week after a book by Richard A. Clarke that blasted the administration with the charge that Mr. Bush ignored warnings about the Sept. 11 attacks.

But advisers to the president say that Ms. Hughes's impending return to a more full-time role has stirred some unease within a campaign that has been wholly the province of Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political adviser. The president trusts Ms. Hughes like almost no one else on his staff, so much so that some Bush aides say they are worried that a return of the two-headed Rove-Hughes team could lead to internal disputes about strategy and message that so far have been muted. Others point out that even though Ms. Hughes and Mr. Rove have a history of tension, they also have a history through three campaigns of working it out.

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