"That was a mistake - we need to seize on it."
Adam Nagourney reports in the NYT that this is what President Bush said to his aides after Kerry said he would have voted to authorize the President to go to war even if he had known that weapons of mass destruction would not be found. Bush is very involved in his reelection campaign. 'He doesn't read the newspapers. He's a moron." Yeah, right.
A "hagiography" from Nagourney? Unbelievable.
August 29, 2004
Bush Takes On Direct Role in Shaping Election Tactics
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and ELISABETH BUMILLER
President Bush will accept his party's nomination in New York this week on the crest of a campaign that aides say reflects an unusual level of involvement from the president himself, particularly in driving attacks on Senator John Kerry that have characterized his re-election effort since the spring.
Several aides said Mr. Bush views this as the campaign of his life, and has intervened on matters as large as the themes it should strike and as small as camera angles on his television advertisements.
While making sure Mr. Kerry is challenged at every opening, they said, the single most consuming concern for Mr. Bush is that there is an elaborate get-out-the-vote operation in November in anticipation of a contest as tight as the one in 2000.
Mr. Bush, in an interview in New Mexico last week, was careful to present himself as above the rough and tumble of a campaign, saying he was busy dealing with the problems of the country.
"I try to balance my job with my desire to win four more years," he said on Thursday.
Still, aides say that the president's involvement and interest is far deeper than is widely known, although Karl Rove continues to dominate the campaign as the top White House political adviser.
Mixed in with the updates on national security by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and Vice President Dick Cheney that Mr. Bush receives in his daily Oval Office morning briefings is a quick campaign overview from Mr. Rove.
Mr. Bush's role in his own campaign was described in extensive interviews with aides and party leaders as Republicans gather to nominate Mr. Bush for a second term. They arrived in New York buoyed by three new polls suggesting Mr. Bush's standing has improved at least somewhat against Mr. Kerry.
Democrats contend that any damage to Mr. Kerry's popularity was caused by unsubstantiated claims by veterans disputing his Vietnam combat record, and that Mr. Bush will ultimately be hurt by their charge that his campaign was secretly orchestrating the veterans' attacks.
Beyond the involvement of the president himself, aides say the strategy that has brought Mr. Bush to this point is quietly being directed not from the Oval Office but by what his inner circle privately calls the Breakfast Club - a small group of advisers who gather on weekends at Mr. Rove's home in northwest Washington, where, over eggs and bacon cooked by Mr. Rove, they measure the campaign's progress against a detailed plan devised 18 months ago.
Learning From Father's Loss
The value of Mr. Bush's involvement in his own campaign - and whether he has the political savvy of some other presidents - is the subject of debate among Democrats and some Republicans who have expressed misgivings about some pivotal tactical moves the campaign has made. But aides said he was determined not to repeat the mistake of his father, who refused to immerse himself in his re-election drive until late, and was not nearly as combative in his losing effort against Bill Clinton in 1992.
In particular, aides said, Mr. Bush has, along with Mr. Rove, been a driving force behind the attacks that have come to define this campaign for the presidency since Mr. Kerry emerged from the spring primaries as the Democratic candidate.
Two weeks ago, after learning that Mr. Kerry said he would have voted to authorize the president to invade Iraq even if he had known that Saddam Hussein was not armed with weapons of mass destruction, the president jumped at the moment. "That was a mistake - we need to seize on it," Mr. Bush told his aides. The next day, he began hammering Mr. Kerry on the issue, and has not stopped.
At the same time, Mr. Bush was described by aides as intensely interested in building the get-out-the-vote operation, a front where he and Mr. Rove argue Al Gore nearly won the presidency four years ago.
His aides said that he was frequently expressing worry that the effort could get neglected given the demands of raising money and making television advertisements.
"How are the grass roots, how are the volunteers?" Mr. Bush demanded of the Ohio Republican chairman, Bob Bennett, a few weeks ago in the middle of what Mr. Bennett described as a detailed conversation on Ohio farming and Ohio politics as the president's campaign bus rolled through his state.
The president's engagement goes far beyond voter drives. He calls Mr. Rove most mornings, sometimes as early as 6 a.m., for an update on everything from the latest state polls to what Mr. Kerry said the night before, aides said.
He regularly summons his media adviser, Mark McKinnon, to the White House, where Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura, screen early cuts of campaign advertisements in the Yellow Room of the family residence. Campaigning in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a few weeks ago, he spotted two senior aides, Matthew Dowd and Nicolle Devenish, at a rally and called them into his limousine to pepper them with campaign questions.
His conversations with Mr. Rove - often by telephone as Mr. Rove is driving to work; sometimes in the Oval Office before 8 a.m. - amount to two seasoned political operatives sharing a take on the lay of the land. The subjects, Mr. Rove said in an interview: "What's the general buzz, state polls, what is out there as major activity in the campaign, voter registration numbers."
And it is not only broad matters. Mr. Rove recently shared the kind of inside-baseball news that could be appreciated only by someone who had run another campaign, as Mr. Bush did for his father: that the Kerry campaign had suspended its advertising in Louisiana and Arkansas.
Mr. Bush has always had a strong taste for politics, albeit that is not something he has spotlighted during his years for president. But his involvement in this campaign appears stronger than in 2000, reflecting what aides said was his concern about his prospects, a determination not to repeat the mistakes that he watched his father make in 1992, and lessons he drew from the close election of 2000.
Mr. Bush has put to use the knowledge that he accumulated working on his father's campaigns in 1988 and 1992 - the political dynamics and history of battleground states, the names of important local Republicans. Through it all, he has shown what his close aides describe as a knowledge of and fascination with politics (though not necessarily the command) reminiscent of Mr. Clinton.
As Mr. Bush was flying from Texas to New Mexico on Thursday, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, turned to him on Air Force One and suggested that Albuquerque was heavily Democratic, White House aides said. Mr. Bush corrected him, saying the city was split politically, and he talked about the importance of its suburban counties, noting that until recently, Albuquerque had been governed by Republican mayors.
In an interview, Representative Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican, recounted a campaign trip with Mr. Bush this month on Air Force One to Traverse City. "We talked a lot about northern Michigan; I was amazed at how much he knew,'' Mr. Camp said. "He's very strategic in the way he thinks. He had an understanding of the makeup of the district, of the nature of the registration and of the voting patterns.''
Mr. Bush also knew what kind of government announcements might make the difference in the election: while in Michigan, he announced he was opposed to diverting water from Lake Michigan, an issue Mr. Bush said would help him draw voters across the board.
"To be able to come in here and say that we're not going to divert water from the Great Lakes was a huge issue for appealing to Republicans, Democrats and independents,'' Mr. Camp said.
Representative Rob Portman of Ohio, a top campaign adviser, had a similar observation. "He understands the distinction between the Northeast and the Southwest, and he understands that central Ohio is a battleground," Mr. Portman said. "He knows what it takes on the ground to win a campaign. Not every candidate has that feel."
Gambling on the Attack
Whether Mr. Bush's enthusiasm for the nuts and bolts of campaigning translates into the kind of expertise of a Clinton is a matter of debate. Some independent experts have questioned the wisdom of one of the central gambles of Mr. Bush's campaign: going after Mr. Kerry the moment he won the nomination, with the president himself leading the charge. Some of the experts say he squandered the higher ground of the White House for little return.
And some of Mr. Bush's own associates cringed when he decided against speaking at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People because he was annoyed with its criticism of his civil rights record. It provided an opening for Mr. Kerry and reinforced an image of Mr. Bush as a president who played hardball.
Even so, Mr. Bush has brought a focus and intensity that often seemed missing from his father's effort in 1992, and advisers said that was no coincidence. One aide said a common scene in the White House these days was Mr. Bush, after reading the morning news accounts of the campaign, shouting, as he did a few weeks ago, "Hit him - we need to hit back."
The Bush campaign is organized - at least most visibly - around two central places, the White House and campaign headquarters in a nondescript office building in Arlington, Va., run by Mr. Bush's campaign manager, Ken Mehlman.
But many of the most significant decisions are made out of the spotlight of either the White House or the headquarters. They are instead reached by the Breakfast Club.
For nearly a year, that small group of senior aides from the White House and campaign headquarters has assembled for what Mr. Rove calls "eggies" - cholesterol-laden concoctions of eggs, butter, cream and bacon fat. He serves them with slabs of bacon. There, they discuss a schedule of attacks on Mr. Kerry, speeches by Mr. Bush, and forthcoming television advertisements and strategic thrusts, according to several aides.
The group typically includes Mr. Rove; Mr. Mehlman; Mr. McKinnon; Mr. Dowd; Ms. Devenish; Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director; Mary Matalin, a senior adviser to Dick Cheney; Ed Gillespie, the national Republican chairman; and Steve Schmidt, the campaign press spokesman.
The sessions are in some ways reminiscent of the after-hours meetings Mr. Clinton would convene in the family quarters of the White House with two dozen aides during his own bid for re-election. By holding them at his home, Mr. Rove keeps the inner circle tighter, in keeping with the style of this campaign. Mr. Bush has yet to attend a meeting of the Breakfast Club.
On weekdays, aides say, the campaign essentially begins in the White House residence, where Mr. Bush rises at 5 a.m. to read the newspapers and check on the political news, before calling Mr. Rove to compare notes on what took place overnight and what will take place later.
By 7 a.m., when he is in the Oval Office, aides say, Mr. Bush will frequently tell them about an article they have not seen and tell them to call the reporter and complain. At about the same time, Mr. Rove and Mr. Mehlman speak by telephone, often as they drive to work.
Mr. Bush's advisers said he approached the campaign much the same way he approached the presidency. He was not, one said, a "micromanager," and was most interested in the broader strategic decisions made by the campaign.
"He's a strategy person," Mr. Bartlett said. "He wants to know some individual items, but mostly he wants to know, what is the strategy."
Mr. Rove said he typically goes to Mr. Bush in the morning with a list of as many as two dozen topics and political questions scrawled in longhand. Mr. Bush is very engaged at the beginning of the conversation, but begins to flag before long, Mr. Rove said.
"He'll say, 'You're running out of airspeed and altitude,' " Mr. Rove said.
Mr. Bush has visited the campaign headquarters in Virginia only once, and most of his morning telephone calls and conversations - he was forced to stop sending e-mail when he became president - are with Mr. Rove, Mr. Bartlett, Mr. Mehlman and Karen P. Hughes, his former top aide in the White House and now a top adviser who, White House officials say, keeps him on an even keel while he travels.
"I'm constantly in touch with Karl, Karen, Dan Bartlett, people who are involved with the campaign," Mr. Bush said in the interview last week. "I don't limit my conversation to a particular time of the day.'' But, he added, "if the question is, Is it different running this time now that you're the president, the answer is yes. I've got a job to do."
Still, there is abundant evidence of the close attention Mr. Bush is paying to this contest. His aides said Mr. Bush - and Mr. Rove - pushed for the campaign to take the unusual step of mounting an early and often brutal attack that used the president himself as well as television advertisements when Mr. Kerry effectively won the nomination.
A Confident Campaigner
His knowledge from overseeing states during his father's last two campaigns gives him what aides describe as the confidence to challenge the most minor of scheduling decisions.
Similarly, Mr. Bush pressed his aides to fill his day with the highly choreographed question-and-answer sessions with invited supporters that have become a staple of his campaign - and that were used in his father's campaigns.
They have provided Mr. Bush with easy, friendly forums and very favorable local television coverage, aides said, while giving him some practice with what could be one of the debate formats this fall.
Beyond that, he is involved in deciding the daily theme or attack of the day. While the vast majority of what he says is written by speechwriters, he does write some of his own lines - usually attacks on his Democratic opponent.
Ms. Hughes said that after the president had seen that Mr. Kerry said Mr. Bush's policies in Iraq were only encouraging terrorists, he began what has become a refrain: "You don't create terrorists by defending yourself and fighting back. You defeat the terrorists by fighting back."
Mr. Bush has long been portrayed by his aides as too busy running the country to be concerned with politics, a perception he sought to encourage in the interview. He responded vaguely to questions about his political involvement and said he did not recall the conversation recounted by aides in which he seized on the statement by Mr. Kerry on Iraq.
Republicans said the campaign was built around Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove, and small groups of people working in the White House and at the headquarters. It is, by all counts, efficient and free to date of the kind of staff disruptions that have shadowed Mr. Kerry's campaign this year.
"I sort of liken it to a political version of the Atlanta Braves - there aren't a lot of highs and lows in the clubhouse," said Ralph Reed, a senior Bush adviser. "It's very workaday. People show up and get the job done."
The campaign is at once centralized and insular. Party officials and consultants say Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove are rarely eager for criticism, or to divert from their master plan, a matter of concern for some Republicans watching Mr. Kerry's attacks.
"People are highly motivated to work for Bush, but the campaign is so centralized it's not fun," said one Republican close to the operation. "It's efficiently run, but all orders flow from the top; everyone else is an implementer."
More than anything, aides said Mr. Bush was motivated by his desire not to go through what his father did in 1992, when he lost a race after a campaign that many Republicans described as anemic.
"There was some sense that his father was not out there fighting for it, that deep down, maybe he didn't really want another term," said one White House adviser. "The president thinks that perception is wrong, but he understands that voters want to see a candidate who asks for the vote and fights for the vote."
Mr. Bennett, the Ohio party chairman, said Mr. Bush had gained from that experience, and he saw it both in the energy the president brought to the campaign trail and in the knowledge he brought behind the scenes.
"I'm astounded at the amount of knowledge that he has about Ohio - the names of little towns, talking about the farmland," he said.
"When his father ran for president, he spent a lot of time in Ohio, in 1992," Mr. Bennett said. "People underestimate this president, and they underestimate his knowledge.''
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