McCain's Moment

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Even before the results were in from New Hampshire, McCain was raising his game to a more professional level. The freewheeling press salons that used to take place unchaperoned by any campaign aides are now more structured. Strategist Mike Murphy sits at McCain's right hand, playing hall monitor by clarifying positions and editing possible missteps the candidate might make. Murphy is a bottomless pit of tall tales and campaign spin who can spell the candidate from having to provide round-the-clock sound bites and chatter.

Lines are discussed in afternoon debriefing sessions and then incorporated into the evening events. "A click more on Clinton," says Murphy in South Carolina, after a day's worth of events in which McCain has already turned up his bashing of the Administration. As the expected attacks come from Bush, aides warn McCain not to bite. "Let us handle him," says Murphy. McCain must stay presidential, above the fracas.

It took George Bush a while just to realize he'd been shot. His aides had been relentlessly smug about his prospects coming out of Iowa. He was so confident in the final strategy sessions that when New Hampshire veterans like Judd Gregg and Tom Rath urged Bush to slap McCain around a little, cut a negative ad comparing McCain to Clinton and slot it into the weekend rotation, they ran into a wall. Like his dad fending off Bob Dole in 1988, "W" was resistant, but unlike his dad, he wouldn't be budged. One reason: "W" believed he was gaining strength and didn't feel the need to get nasty. "It was a principal problem," said a big fund raiser, using the antiseptic, military language of the White House. "It's in his genes. They had to beg his old man to put up an ad 12 years ago, but 'W' didn't want to do it."

Rath thought McCain was getting a free ride. "The question is whether we should have defined him earlier," Rath recalls. "One of the reasons you couldn't introduce any contrary evidence on him was because he had become St. John. It was too late." And Bush was adamant: the whole point of their strategy--of building the unprecedented war chest and collecting all the endorsements--was to get so far out in front that there would be no need to lurch to the right or engage in intraparty fratricide. "Our object is to win a nomination that is worth having," said Bush's chief strategist, Karl Rove. Go negative now, and you lose people's respect.

So instead Bush went snowmobiling. And sledding. And bowling. On the last day before the vote, his schedule broke down completely. "If your candidate's principal perception problem is that he lacks gravitas," complained a Bush donor, "why be seen playing with children?" It was less a campaign than a parade, and one that he didn't always seem to be enjoying much. Aides whispered that he was homesick. He hadn't engaged with the voters, hadn't settled into the lumpy sofas in their living rooms with a cup of watery coffee or stood in their meeting halls patiently listening to their concerns and answering their questions. Emily Mead, who worked in the Bush White House before returning to New Hampshire to run a small policy think tank, saw it coming. She'd even sent a warning note to Barbara Bush, who wrote back that she would pass it on. "Three months went by, and he was hardly here at all," said Mead. "You can't run a campaign like that and expect to win."