Political party conventions serve several purposes. Party platforms and candidates are endorsed. Party workers are motivated to go out and do the gritty work of democracy. And, most importantly, the party is positioned to the public, which on Nov. 4 will ratify or reject its policies and politicians.

All of which makes the state GOP's selection of former White House aide Karl Rove as the keynote speaker for this weekend's convention so puzzling. Sure, he'll entertain. And maybe even enlighten, as he now does as a political pundit for Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. But his appearance suggests a party more energized by partisan politics than by moderate messages that might attract independent voters and disenfranchised Democrats.

Rove comes to Minnesota with most state residents, 77 percent, believing the country is on the wrong track and 68 percent disapproving of the president, according to a recent Star Tribune Minnesota Poll.

Indeed, Bush's 25 percent approval rating was the lowest since President Nixon's 1974 collapse to 20 percent. And it's not only Democrats who are disgruntled. The poll found that 30 percent of those respondents who identified themselves as Republicans disapprove of the president.

Rove's convention speech will come the same week the news broke on the new book written by Scott McClellan, Bush's former press secretary. Excerpts from "What Happened," McClellan's scathing screed against the Bush White House, have the Beltway -- and beyond -- buzzing.

It reportedly offers a withering assessment of Rove, who McClellan claims "at best misled" him about his role in the case of former CIA agent Valerie Plame. Even more damaging, he rails against the administration's "excessive embrace of the permanent campaign approach to governance" and uses the term "propaganda" to describe, and decry, the case built for going to war in Iraq.

Much of this was the work of Rove, whom Bush called "the architect."

And the House Judiciary Committee apparently thinks his blueprints were part of two other highly politicized cases, the 2006 firing of nine U.S. attorneys and the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat. The White House is balking on having Rove testify before the committee, citing executive privilege.

Despite daunting poll numbers and an electoral thrashing in the 2006 state Senate and House races, Minnesota Republicans have much to rally around. Sen. Norm Coleman has defied Washington gravity and is leading in the polls. And Gov. Tim Pawlenty not only just avoided a legislative train wreck, but may be on a vice presidential fast track.

But that's politics. Both parties need to focus on ideas, and governance. Showcasing Rove, whom state GOP Chairman Ron Carey calls a "rock star" among the Republican base, seems out of tune with how the party should be projecting itself to the public these days.