Taking Aim At 2004

Four years after he launched his first campaign for president, here's what we've learned about George W. Bush. He sees the world in black and white, good and evil. He has the macho gait of a West Texan but carries his Scottish terrier, Barney, up and down the stairs of Air Force One like a New England patrician. He delegates authority but relishes the big decisions--and never looks back after making them. He trusts in a heavenly God but believes just as devoutly in the power of leadership on earth. Now, as his second campaign gets rolling, here's what we don't know. Will his success abroad translate into a winning message here at home? Is he going to sit on his lead as his father did, or will he spend his political capital as he's promised he would? And does he have any answer to the nation's economic woes beyond his all-purpose doctrine of tax cuts?

Two of the men George W. Bush most admires--his father and Winston Churchill--led their nations to military triumphs only to be tossed out of office by restless voters who wanted attention paid to the home front. At the moment, the President is on top of the world, a foreign policy neophyte who has two wars under his belt, a loser of the popular vote whose performance as President now wins the approval of more than 7 of 10 Americans. But voters are turning their attention away from Iraq just as Bush begins his quest for the validation that escaped him in 2000: a real majority and a mandate from the American people. "He's proved he could be a strong leader when we needed one," says a close adviser to the Bush White House. "Now he has to translate that back to domestic issues, to the things people are going to care about in November 2004. If he can, he'll win. He may even win big. If he can't, and the economy is still in bad shape, all bets are off."

ENDLESS WAR

The symbolism was unmistakable. As Bush talked about tax cuts last week in Lima, Ohio, he was flanked by the guns of two M-1 Abrams tanks. The week before, while pushing those same tax cuts in St. Louis, Mo., he stood in front of a $48 million F-18 fighter jet. As the first statue of Saddam fell in Baghdad three weeks ago, the White House was putting into motion a plan that would allow the President to pivot from his focus abroad to mending fences at home. Bush's "hardware in the heartland" tour follows the battle plan for his re-election effort: from now until November 2004, he will blend martial images with rhetoric about tax cuts and never let the nation forget that we're at war both abroad and at home. "Sure, he talked about his domestic agenda," says a White House official of the St. Louis event, "but there were F-18s in the background." Yes, Bush will focus on kitchen-table concerns, but there will always be the shadow of guns just behind him.