FEBRUARY 14, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 6

It took George Bush a while just to realize he'd been shot. His aides had been relentlessly smug about his prospects coming out of Iowa. He was so confident in the final strategy sessions that when New Hampshire veterans like Judd Gregg and Tom Rath urged Bush to slap McCain around a little, cut a negative ad comparing McCain to Clinton and slot it into the weekend rotation, they ran into a wall. Like his dad fending off Bob Dole in 1988, "W" was resistant, but unlike his dad, he wouldn't be budged. One reason: "W" believed he was gaining strength and didn't feel the need to get nasty. "It was a principal problem," said a big fund raiser, using the antiseptic, military language of the White House. "It's in his genes. They had to beg his old man to put up an ad 12 years ago, but 'W' didn't want to do it."

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Rath thought McCain was getting a free ride. "The question is whether we should have defined him earlier," Rath recalls. "One of the reasons you couldn't introduce any contrary evidence on him was because he had become St. John. It was too late." And Bush was adamant: the whole point of their strategy--of building the unprecedented war chest and collecting all the endorsements--was to get so far out in front that there would be no need to lurch to the right or engage in intraparty fratricide. "Our object is to win a nomination that is worth having," said Bush's chief strategist, Karl Rove. Go negative now, and you lose people's respect.

So instead Bush went snowmobiling. And sledding. And bowling. On the last day before the vote, his schedule broke down completely. "If your candidate's principal perception problem is that he lacks gravitas," complained a Bush donor, "why be seen playing with children?" It was less a campaign than a parade, and one that he didn't always seem to be enjoying much. Aides whispered that he was homesick. He hadn't engaged with the voters, hadn't settled into the lumpy sofas in their living rooms with a cup of watery coffee or stood in their meeting halls patiently listening to their concerns and answering their questions. Emily Mead, who worked in the Bush White House before returning to New Hampshire to run a small policy think tank, saw it coming. She'd even sent a warning note to Barbara Bush, who wrote back that she would pass it on. "Three months went by, and he was hardly here at all," said Mead. "You can't run a campaign like that and expect to win."

He left the impression that maybe this was the hardest thing he had ever done--and he still was taking weekends off. Even as McCain bounced along the back roads clearly having a blast, breaking rules, insulting voters and reporters and staff members with glee, Bush was doing half the work with twice the effort. Maybe this wasn't exactly what he signed on for, when all those delegations were flying down to Austin and begging him to be the savior of the party. Now he had to do the begging, explain why someone who brags that he never wanted to be President actually deserves to be.

To win over the coddled voters of New Hampshire, it was not enough to ride into town whistling Hail to the Chief, followed by an entourage that included nearly as many clean-cut men and women talking into their sleeves as you'd expect to see when the real President came to town. There were rope lines and security sweeps and hard-bodied guys with sunglasses and bulges from the holsters under their suit coats who kept the crowds at bay and glared at anyone who looked like a trouble-maker. Bush would shake hands and sign autographs endlessly after one of his speeches, but he wouldn't engage in any kind of serious talk. "How ya' doin?" and "Thanks for your support!" and "I appreciate it!" sufficed for most encounters.

Bush even suffered from the beauty of his speeches; even when they didn't say much, they said it well--so well that the words seemed not his own. Especially when his genetic estrangement from the language poked through the script. Bush liked to joke that anyone in the audience who planned on voting for one of what he called his "erstwhile opponents" should refrain from voting more than once. It took weeks before Bush figured out that he didn't mean to say "erstwhile" but "worthwhile." Then there were the "tacular weapons" and the worry that single moms have about "putting food on their family."

To the extent that either of the two contenders had a message, McCain's was working better. Bush took it as gospel that He Who Promises the Bigger Tax Cut Wins. His $483 billion plan was supposed to trump the cautious McCain, who talked more about paying down the debt than paying off the voters. But he hadn't bargained on pinch-fisted Yankees like the man at the Nashua Chamber of Commerce breakfast who stood up and punctured the theory. "I'm tired of all this tax-cut nonsense," the questioner told the Governor. "Can we stop it, please?" To which Bush replied, "I don't believe it's nonsense. I'm not gonna drop my plan. If the heat gets on, I'm gonna keep to it. If you like it, I'm gonna take it to Congress. If you don't like it, you can send me home to Texas."

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