The ads that tar Kerry as a waffler can sit in the can for a few more weeks, say Bush officials, who hope the press will give Kerry the going over he was largely spared during his primary campaign. In the meantime, the campaign has rows of binders cataloging Kerry's votes and speeches and, sources tell TIME, it has asked focus groups about the Massachusetts Senator. Not surprisingly, officials say, he comes across just as Republicans have tried to caricature him: aloof and ambivalent. "He is not a look-you-in-the-eye kind of guy," says one.

GET BACK INTO SHAPE
Was Karl Rove asleep at the switch? Republicans have a mystical faith in the President's political adviser, but that devotion has been tested as Bush's standing in the polls has dropped. New gambits like a mission to Mars and an amnesty program for illegal immigrants left supporters cold. When the President talked about steroids in January's State of the Union speech, they wondered if a team once known for doing big and bold things hadn't become bogged down in narrowcasting. (As it turns out, the idea actually came from Bush, who had noticed, say aides, that some major league players "had their careers resurrected" in ways that pointed to the possibility of steroid use.) The White House response to Democratic attacks also seemed groggy, which some officials say was caused by the sudden arrival, much sooner than they had expected, of a feisty general-election campaign. "It's a lot easier to respond from the mountaintop when things are going well. But when you're in the trenches and slugging it out, you have to be faster, and the only time they've ever had to do that was in the South Carolina primary four years ago," says a Republican political strategist, referring to the hard fight against John McCain in 2000.

The Bush political team, though, believes it is getting the kinks out of the system. One example: campaign and Republican National Committee (R.N.C.) rapid-response makers had been labeling Kerry a "Massachusetts liberal," not knowing that Bush likes attacks to be more specific. "He doesn't like it because it doesn't tell you anything," says a top Bush aide. "Tell people what that means. That's what he wants." Result: the campaign no longer uses the shorthand phrase Massachusetts liberal. Bush last week instead pointed to the particular when he told Republican Governors, "The candidates are an interesting group, with diverse opinions: for tax cuts and against them. For NAFTA and against NAFTA. For the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act. In favor of liberating Iraq and opposed to it. And that's just one Senator from Massachusetts."

INVEST FOR THE LONG TERM
What has given the Bush campaign the most confidence during these dark days is its ground organization. While Democrats were attacking, the Bush team says it was quietly laying track. Much of the $41 million the campaign has spent so far out of the $140 million raised has been on this quiet infrastructure. Indeed, campaign manager Ken Mehlman, the Harvard-educated son of a CPA, has worked so diligently to build a field organization that some call him the "accountant" for his excessive attention to detail.

It has paid off. The Bush team has county chairs in all the 1,189 counties in 18 of the target states from 2000. It has held 127 regional training sessions. By June, it will have made 800,000 phone calls to Republicans. Almost 200,000 volunteers have signed on. It boasts that it will be able to run the first "national precinct campaign," involving lieutenants in all the 10,020 precincts of every swing state, a level of blanketing usually reserved for smaller campaigns.

Historically, Republicans have been behind Democrats at get-out-the-vote efforts, the tedious but vital work of calling people, getting them to the polls, making sure there is eye contact. But Rove, Mehlman and the G.O.P. have been trying to make a science of voter motivation since the 2000 election and have determined that reluctant voters are four times as likely to turn out if they are contacted personally. Bush officials found, for instance, that this kind of effort is the most effective with Latinos who have never had such attention from the G.O.P. If you are a swing-state Republican, lean that way or happen to share an interest like NASCAR or the N.R.A., someone is probably going to knock on your door between now and Election Day. You may already know G.O.P. officials from the church potluck or Little League, but if you don't, they hope to lavish attention on you.

In the meantime, Bush is not going to let the election take the edge off his self-confidence. When he gave those Republican Governors a tour of the White House, he showed them an 1868 painting — The Peacemakers, by George P.A. Healy — that portrays Abraham Lincoln at the end of the Civil War, meeting with his generals about how to occupy the South. The President pointed to the grim visage of the Great Emancipator and said, "Look at the lines of strain on his face." As bad as things get, Bush doesn't let such marks show on his.

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