Who Chose George?

(8 of 9)

The story is so perfect, God's calling him to lead a broken people, it is like candy for the skeptics who believe that every moment of this extraordinary ascent has been spun and scripted down to the last amen. It has something for everyone: it works for the family, for the Christians, for the Texans, the independents and moderates who don't want someone who feels he just deserves this by birthright. It works for those who believe this is all about revenge, with mom sitting there in her triple strand of pearls urging her son on. It also might have the virtue of being true.

From that point on, say the Governor's allies, he threw his back into the race. Within the Bush camp, the dominant conversation ever since has been how to manage these expectations--with the answer that if you keep talking about how high they are, it will seem too conventional for reporters to write about how he failed to meet them, and so maybe, just maybe, the news cycle will smile on them and the counterintuitive story of the debut will be that Bush actually lived up to them. How else to explain the name of the plane that ferried Bush to Iowa last weekend: Great Expectations?

"I take nothing for granted," Bush said in a rough-and-ready maiden speech on Saturday. "I'm running, and I'm running hard. I'm taking my front-porch campaign to every front porch in this state." Standing between bales of hay and farm tractors, Bush drew only broad strokes for reduced taxes and regulation, free trade, a strong military and an aggressive approach to education. He made official the mantra of his run. "I'm proud to be a compassionate conservative. I welcome the label and, on this ground, I will make my stand."

This summer, Bush aides say, is all about introducing the candidate and letting folks get a sense of his heart. Come the fall, when people might start paying attention to politics, there will be plenty of time for him to lay out a 10-point plan on fixing Social Security. Some of Bush's opponents have made their annoyance at all this tiptoeing plain. "People don't know what he stands for," said Dan Quayle in Iowa last week, wondering how Junior swiped his crown. "He's got to come in and fight for this nomination. I'll be darned if we're going to have this nomination inherited by a particular candidate."

Bush loyalists have a ready answer for that charge. The old days of the smoke-filled rooms, says an aide, produced better candidates than the current primary process that has seen Lamar Alexander campaign nonstop for six years. "The genius of the old system was that people with the interests of the party at heart made decisions," the Bush aide argues. "They knew the guys' characters: He's got it, he doesn't. He's clean, he's a slimeball. Clinton wouldn't have got very far under that system."