Who Chose George?

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But if Bush stayed home and didn't open the door, he didn't slam it either. He left it ajar and started flirting. The G.O.P. moneymen are a skittish lot: they love a winner, hate being left behind, and once a bunch start to go, the rest tend to follow. This time around, there was so much hunger for a winner that Bush could actually hope to do something no one had ever managed before: sweep the money primary, the first big test of whom the insiders like, and pretty much coast through the ones that involve actual voters. The other candidates, still hoping that a surprise breakout in Iowa or New Hampshire would win them enough attention to make up for all the ads they couldn't afford to buy, weren't counting on Bush's sucking all the oxygen out of the race before it even starts.

Bush had a giant basket of names to start with--from Texas, from his father, from his work in Major League Baseball, from Yale, Harvard and Andover. He and Rove appealed to the old hands in a new way: he actually asked for their opinions before he asked for their money. He questioned them about the political landscape, about the other candidates' strengths and weaknesses, about policy--the kind of intellectual stroking that fund raisers don't normally get. And Bush's team set out to pull in a whole new cadre, people who hadn't been interested in politics before because it was an old man's game, who had watched the Democrats anoint the baby boomers in 1992 while the G.O.P. grayheads fumbled. As Bush told a fund raiser in the fall of 1997, "If I do something, I'd like to have my friends who have some campaign experience around me. It's not going to look backward. I don't want people who are cynical and scarred from my father's time."

By fall, Rove was in steady contact with operatives in key states, asking veterans whom to call, whom to meet, how to make approaches and what they were hearing. His line to them was the same: "Keep your powder dry." It was too early to ask for a commitment, but with those four words, the Bush team froze dozens of fund raisers and organizers in place so no other candidate could win them over. Robert Bennett, the Ohio party chairman, recalls the early feelers from Rove that summer. "They weren't ruling it in; they weren't ruling it out. But they were leaving the definite impression that they were--how shall I say this--heading for a presidential effort."

That first year, Bush made only one mistake: he gave a flat speech in Indianapolis, Ind., at a party event designed to showcase the contenders. But even this tiny stumble turned out for the best. Bush had a reason to avoid beauty contests for the next two years and a handy reference for lowering expectations. He remained extremely disciplined in interviews, telling the stories about how he didn't want to grow up to be President, he wanted to be Willie Mays, keeping his famous temper in check, turning the other cheek.

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