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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tadsamillionaire who wrote (1786)	4/21/2003 11:26:15 PM
From: Tadsamillionaire	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

(Page 2 of 3) White House officials have portrayed Mr. Bush as a president with little involvement to date in planning his re-election campaign. The matter is so sensitive that Republicans who have been consulted by the White House officials said they had been warned not to divulge discussions about the campaign. The concern is that such conversations might run counter to the portrayal by Republicans of a White House paying little mind to politics. Behind the scenes, Mr. Bush's advisers have been assembling the framework for the 2004 campaign. They have set fund-raising targets, made personnel decisions and made calculations of the contest's ideological and geographic contours to try to turn Mr. Bush's incumbency to his advantage at every opportunity. White House officials, led by Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, are in the midst of an extensive examination of the history of previous re-election campaigns. Since the start of the year, they have conducted in-depth interviews with Republicans who have run recent presidential campaigns, reflecting Mr. Rove's fascination with political history and the determination of the White House not to repeat what they see as the mistakes of past Republican candidates, especially Mr. Bush's father in 1992. Some advisers said they were hopeful that the 2004 contest would mirror the 1984 re-election of Ronald Reagan, who loped to an overwhelming victory over Walter F. Mondale. Other Bush advisers said the apter model appeared to be Franklin D. Roosevelt's election to a third term over Wendell L. Willkie in 1940, at a time when the nation was unsettled by the spreading global war and the pressure on the United States to enter the conflict. For the next 18 months, Mr. Bush's explicitly political appearances will be limited almost exclusively to fund-raisers and tending-the-vineyard visits to important political states like New Hampshire. Republicans close to White House described the strategy as being in the formative stages, saying much would depend on what happened in the world and to the American economy over the next year, as well as on whom the Democrats nominate. White House officials, as well as Democrats, said they expected the Democratic opponent to become clear by the first or second week of March 2004. Although the White House has put out the word that Mr. Bush was prepared to raise $200 million for the pre-convention period, several Republicans said the figure was not based on a determined need, but by a desire to rally their fund-raising network to work hard and to rattle Democrats by reminding them of the fund-raising dominance of the president. "We have the capability to raise it," an adviser to Mr. Bush said. "Whether we do so will depend on the need."' In presenting Mr. Bush as being unengaged with the demands of his re-election campaign, Republicans close to the White House have been trying to draw a contrast with the Democrats. They have systematically sought to discredit the Democratic field by portraying nearly everything those candidates do and say as politically motivated. That said, nearly every appearance Mr. Bush makes has political overtones, and with the war in Iraq effectively over, he is already shifting back into a more recognizable partisan mode. Already, the president's travel schedule is emphasizing states that will prove pivotal in the 2004 election. He went to Missouri last week and is heading for Ohio this week. Since those trips are presented as official White House travel, they were not billed against Mr. Bush's re-election campaign. The White House has made clear that Mr. Bush will not provide an easy opening for Democrats by neglecting a domestic agenda, as he now moves to draw on his political strength as the leader of the nation during a time at war to advance his domestic record. To that end, he visited a fighter-jet production factory last week to pitch his tax cut plan and is likely to use the setting of a tank factory in Ohio this week to advance the same subject. nytimes.com