Campaign 2000: The Selling of George Bush

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At first glance, McKinnon is an unlikely messenger for the G.O.P. cause. With the air of the Nashville singer-songwriter he once was, he is the kind of hep-cat presence that red-meat Republicans like to mock. A longtime Democratic consultant, based in Austin, Texas, who grew so disillusioned with politics that he gave it up in the mid-1990s, McKinnon was wooed back into the game by Bush's charms. Now he is not only Bush's chief imagemaker--directing the convention film, overseeing the campaign ads and even shooting some of the footage himself--but he is also part of the Bush message. When searching for proof of the candidate's ability to reach across the political spectrum, communications director Karen Hughes simply points to McKinnon's Road-to-Damascus experience.

If it's odd to have a Democrat working for a Republican, it's even stranger that the message adviser with the Texas-size twang and 'tude is based in the heart of Manhattan. Jim Ferguson, president of Young & Rubicam's New York City office and a Hico, Texas, native, heads up the collection of advertising talent that has been called in to turn its skill for selling Advil and Chicken McNuggets to selling the candidate--much as Reagan's "Tuesday Team" did in 1984. The Park Avenue Posse--named after the location of Ferguson's apartment, where the small group held its first six-hour meeting with advisers from Austin--has worked with the Bush campaign as well as the Republican National Committee on its TV ads, which have already started airing. During its weekly meetings, the Posse also acts as a cultural sounding board for notions from Austin on everything from the candidate's message to convention music. Last week, when some members of the team heard the score written for the convention by Manhattan composer David Horowitz, they gave the thumbs-up.

Rounding out the message team are Hughes and Rove. At campaign headquarters in Austin, an industrious policy shop churns out ideas that fit into the compassionate conservative rubric. Rove then picks the optimal political moment to unveil them. In a process Rove describes as "political heuristics," most people don't retain the details of Bush's proposals, but they come away with a positive feeling about Bush that makes them more inclined to vote for him. "They get a sense of his values, of what kind of a person he is," says Rove.

If Bush's personality is political gold, it was mined in Midland. No conversation with Bush or those who know him lasts very long without loping back to the dusty oil town on the flat plains of West Texas where Bush grew up and then returned to try his hand at business. In the narrative of Bush's life, Midland is seen as a kind of egalitarian utopia. His wife Laura is from Midland, and Bush says he will be buried there. When asked the difference between him and his famously preppy father, the candidate often simply says "Midland," as if no more explanation were needed. "In Midland each individual matters," Bush told TIME. "It's a long way away from the structured world of the East Coast, where there is a sense of class distinction."