Who Chose George?

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Before long, the 2000 question dogged Bush everywhere he went. "He'd get on an elevator," says Hughes, "and people would say, 'I hope I can call you President someday, Governor.' Every week there would be another poll. And Danish TV would turn up in Beaumont. It just built and built." The buzz became a distraction, so Bush called a press conference in October to explain, in a parse-this-if-you-dare statement, that he had not made up his mind. Said Bush: "It is not in the best interests of Texas for me to say right now that I will not run for President."

After the moneymen, the next constituency to woo were the heavyweights who really control the Republican Party these days--the Governors, with their early-warning systems and their fund-raising networks and their serene distance from the party in Congress. One of the first to sign on was Montana's Marc Racicot, who had called in September 1997 out of the blue and told Bush that if he runs, "I'll be there." You're early, the Governor replied then, given the fact that he hadn't even announced whether he was running again for Governor. "Well," Racicot replied, "I'm from the West, and I know a good horse when I see one."

Before 1998, the Republican Governors had never coalesced as a power base, partly because there had never been such a critical mass, 32 of them in all. In contrast to the sinking Congress, the Governors were emerging as stars, centrist and practical CEOs who were busy fixing welfare and improving schools and cutting taxes while Gingrich fiddled. And they came to the table bearing gifts: their organizations, their financial backers and their endorsements. Unlike Clinton, Bush had never been a big mover among the other Governors, never an intellectual force or a policy genius. But they all knew him, many liked him, and most could see he had a priceless brand name.

At the center of the recruitment effort was Michigan's Engler, a two-term Governor who had spent much of the 1990s turning the Republican Governors Association from a paper tiger into an organization that could raise $20 million in a single cycle. During 1998, Engler was the Republican who worried most about how the G.O.P. of Gingrich and Trent Lott had grown too detached from Americans' lives. "A lot of us decided he was the best candidate," Engler told TIME last week. "We wanted to be able to work with someone early on." Though careful to be discreet, Engler privately began to lobby his colleagues on the phone or in meetings, one at a time, sounding them out with an invitation and a warning, similar to what the fund raisers were hearing: Don't wait too long; when the train is leaving the station, you don't want to be the last to climb on board. "I think George looks strong," he'd say to his colleagues. "What do you think?"

And he wasn't always so subtle. At one RGA meeting Engler gathered his colleagues around a table and said, "I think it's got to be someone out of Washington. The only way we take the presidency back is if it's someone from this table." As a participant put it later, "We all knew he wasn't talking about Bill Janklow of South Dakota."