Thanks to a disorienting ear infection, the other day I began thinking I was Karl Rove. As weird as that is, the moment was even stranger because I was channeling President Bush’s political guru through a phenomenal conversion to the Democrats — and I was wondering if there were any Rovian-style winners among their 2008 presidential hopefuls.

My Republican friends need not worry. Next week, I’ll explain what happened when the ear medication had me impersonating Rove in his truly rightful place, as the GOP kingmaker he is, sizing up the Republican White House field.

But imagining the possibility of Rove as Democratic king maker, I wondered if he might just come up with something different that his new party needs to hear.

That’s when I heard something really different, for real — the Democratic governor of North Carolina doing a dead-on impression of Hank Hill. I was on the telephone with Gov. Michael F. Easley, discussing the president’s recent trip to North Carolina to deliver his nationally televised address about Iraq. In a lighter moment, the conversation turned to our favorite prime time cartoon, “King of the Hill,” and in a flash Easley burst into the voice of the lead character, a suburban everyman from Texas who has a typically awkward relationship with his son, Bobby.

“Just remember, Bobby, I’m so proud of you,” Easley said, in a near-perfect rendition of Hank Hill’s soft drawl. “If you weren’t my son, I’d hug you.”

It turns out the Hank Hill line is in Easley’s hit parade, one he repeated for a recent New York Times profile that added fuel to Democratic interest in him as a possible second-tier candidate for the 2008 presidential race. It might not help Easley among Democrats to imagine that Rove would go for him, but he does have a Bush-like way with regular folk the president’s political architect would appreciate.

Easley’s interest in Hank Hill is more than a joking matter. He sees the characters on the show as a reflection of suburban Sun Belt voters and often instructs his pollster to test his support among its viewers. (In the last such survey, he registered 40 percent approval among “King of the Hill” fans, while other Democrats lose this group by at least 3-to-1.) “You know everybody on that show,” Easley says of the down-home characters. “It’s just another way to view things through the prism of people.”

Rove, who has one of the most creative minds in political polling today, surely admires Easley’s political skill. In both of his elections to the governor’s mansion — 2000 and 2004 — the now term-limited Easley has been on the ballot with Bush, and both times he held his own against the Rove campaign onslaught. Today, his state’s voters give him an approval rating at least 10 percentage points higher than they give the president.

Easley’s strong standing at home obviously gave him confidence to offer a sober assessment of Bush’s June 28 speech on Iraq, broadcast from Fort Bragg. Indeed, his assessment of the public mood echoes the concerns we’ve heard from Rove’s shop that led to the scheduling of this speech in the first place.

“They get the feeling we are adrift,” Easley said of average Americans like those in North Carolina. “I think they are uneasy about the Iraqis’ long-term commitment to democracy.”

One trait Rove might not like about Easley is his lack of fiery partisanship. In a recent speech to conservatives, Rove ticked off Democrats by maligning “liberals” for being wimps after Sept. 11. But Easley can make a political case without being so shrill. On the president’s speech performance, he wielded a stiletto instead of the rhetorical howitzer Rove seems to prefer. “He did a pretty good job of explaining what he speculates will happen, what he hopes will happen with a democratic Iraq,” the governor said. “But he didn’t get past his own speculation.”

And unlike so many Democrats in Washington, Easley thinks his party should not alienate mainstream voters by dwelling on the administration’s missteps in handling Iraq. “My hope is that we will be focused on the future and not on what went wrong in the past,” Easley said. “That’s wasted resources. You can’t change that.”

Easley recoils from the Democratic charges that Bush lied to go to war. “We shouldn’t presume that anyone was intentionally misled. We need to ask the question, ‘Now what?’ And debate that more than anything else.”

I’ve talked to lots of Democrats who secretly wish Rove was a Democrat — even while they insult him in public. But you don’t have to catch a mind-altering ear infection to guess what he might do as a Democrat. Considering the horse Rove rode to Washington, he might just advise Democrats to take a hard look at this Southern governor with a common touch and a sense of humor.

Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for MSNBC, CNBC and “The Early Show” on CBS. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.