It was 11:13 p.m. on Tuesday, the moment that Fox News had called Ohio for President Obama. Karl Rove stood just off camera, his phone glued to his ear. On the other end was a senior Romney campaign official who insisted that the network had blown the call.

What followed — an extraordinary on-air confrontation between Mr. Rove, a Fox commentator, and the network’s team of voting analysts — drew renewed focus on the Republican operative’s complicated and conflicting roles in this presidential campaign.

What role was Karl Rove playing when he heatedly contradicted Fox News?

Was he acting as the man who oversaw the most expensive advertising assault on a sitting president in history, unable to face his own wounded pride? The fund-raiser who had persuaded wealthy conservatives to give hundreds of millions of dollars and now had a lot of explaining to do? Or the former political strategist for George W. Bush, who saw firsthand how a botched network call could alter the course of a presidential contest?

Mr. Rove insists that the ghosts of 2000 prompted him to act.

“I had a concern about premature calls, and in this instance, the concern was shared by my Fox colleague Joe Trippi,” Mr. Rove said Wednesday, referring to the Democratic strategist and Fox contributor who ran Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in 2004.