Read My Knuckles

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The architect of whatever-it-takes politics, the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater, helped turn South Carolina, his home state, into the most reliably Republican place in the country. He did so on behalf of George Bush's father in 1988 by exploiting the fears of conservative whites and honing the tactics of search-and-destroy politics--black arts he apologized for in 1991 as he was dying of a brain tumor. Bush's South Carolina team, led by former Governor Carroll Campbell and his onetime chief of staff Warren Tompkins, are masters of Atwater-style politics. Bush and his chief strategist, Karl Rove, were both close to Atwater over the years. Atwater's spirit was hovering over the meeting when Bush's advisers decided it was time to "drive up McCain's negatives." Though Bush had always prided himself on being a positive candidate--even in 1994 when Governor Ann Richards of Texas was calling him "Shrub" and goading him to fight--this time he let his team go to work. "We play it different down here," one of Bush's top South Carolina advisers told TIME last week. "We're not dainty, if you get my drift. We're used to playin' rough."

Bush's team devised a two-pronged strategy aimed at shoring up his image and conservative credentials while carpet-bombing McCain with attacks that portrayed the Arizonan as a hypocrite and a closet liberal. The first part of the plan would be carried out by Bush himself, who had a "wimp factor" to contend with. To allay post-New Hampshire doubts that he wasn't tough enough to go the distance, the Governor attacked McCain in a series of press conferences beginning just days after New Hampshire. Bush started out by calling McCain a Republican who took "Democrat" positions favored by "Bill Clinton and Al Gore" on issues from tax cuts to campaign-finance reform. He stepped up the assault during the next week, holding bash-of-the-day press conferences for four straight days. His barrage against McCain was always the first order of business. He began one press conference by saying, "I want to continue this discussion about saying one thing and doing another."

Each of Bush's points was meant to show McCain as a hypocrite: on public financing of campaigns; on allowing incumbents to "roll over" their campaign war chests (and never mind that Bush had done the same thing); on whether he favored tax hikes in the past. On each occasion, Bush aides would pass out, fax and e-mail memos documenting McCain's alleged hypocrisies. And surrogates--Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, Strom Thurmond, Lieutenant Governor Bob Peeler, Attorney General Charlie Condon and former Governors Campbell and David Beasley--were dispatched to deliver the message in harsher terms on TV and radio. Outside groups--the National Right to Life Committee, Americans for Tax Reform, the National Smokers Alliance--were counted upon to hammer McCain with incendiary radio and TV spots of their own.

The strategy carried risks--notably that Bush would start to seem not just tough but Visigothic. That problem was solved when McCain made his one colossal blunder of the campaign--a move Bush aides call "a gift."