Again The Man to Beat

Eleven a.m., primary day, Nashua, N.H. Lee Atwater, George Bush's campaign ! manager, is nearly beside himself with nervous energy. He has five phones going in his room at the Clarion Hotel. Ordinarily a health nut, he has mooched several cigarettes from assistants this morning, and puffs on them rapidly like a teenager learning how to smoke. An underling calls with the latest intelligence from fieldworkers: "Bush, by a point or two." The news is hardly reassuring, but Atwater keeps talking about a comeback. "One way a candidate, particularly a front runner, gets good," he says, "is to look into the abyss -- and realize that he doesn't like it one little bit."

During the seven tense days after his crushing defeat in the Iowa caucuses, George Bush gazed deep into the black hole of defeat. The bounce from Iowa allowed Bob Dole to overcome a 20-point deficit in the New Hampshire polls; he seemed poised to knock Bush out in only the first round of the primary season. But during the final weekend before the New Hampshire vote, Bush's workers launched a brilliant offensive that rescued their man's candidacy. "I feel that I have a lot in common with Mark Twain," said Bush, who appeared more relieved than excited after beating Dole, 37% to 28%. "Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated." Said Deputy Campaign Manager Rich Bond: "I think we've got a candidate who's been through the fire and toughened up."

It was an odd sort of victory for Bush: just a few weeks ago, beating Dole by fewer than 10 points in New Hampshire would have been considered quite limp. But in the supercharged age of nonstop tracking polls, expectations change almost as fast as the fickle fancies of undecided voters. By the weekend before the voting, polls showed Dole pulling ahead. Surveys taken before the final debate and before the last ads were aired reinforced the conventional wisdom that Bush was collapsing. His last-minute recovery and victory thus became a surprising triumph.

Since he is stronger than Dole in the South, partly because of Ronald Reagan's popularity there, Bush goes into the Super Tuesday race as the undisputed favorite for the nomination. But Bush's New Hampshire rebound resolved little; the only thing settled is that nothing will be settled until at least after the Super Tuesday votes are counted on March 8, and perhaps not until the end of the primary season in June. Although the winner-take-all nature of most Republican primaries -- and the lack of a large bloc of uncommitted superdelegates -- makes a bartered G.O.P. convention far less likely than a bartered Democratic one, the New Hampshire results indicate that both races may go down to the wire.