Bush gears up for 04. There were nine states that Mr. Gore carried by particularly thin margins, and they represent 92 electoral votes next year. Since becoming president, Mr. Bush has traveled to the biggest prize among them, Pennsylvania, 22 times, more than any other state, while visiting another, Michigan, 11 times.
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Bush '04 Readying for One Democrat, Not 10
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and ADAM NAGOURNEY NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — President Bush's political advisers have set in motion an aggressive re-election machine, building a national network of get-out-the-vote workers and amassing a pile of cash for a blanket advertising campaign expected to begin around the time Democrats settle on their candidate early next year, party officials said.
Mr. Bush's senior advisers, in interviews last week, repeatedly described the Democratic field as unusually weak and divided, providing an important if temporary cushion for Mr. Bush.
Still, they said the recent sharp drop in the president's approval ratings, the continued loss of jobs in the economy and the problems plaguing the American occupation of Iraq only made the political outlook more uncertain in an election that they have long thought could be as tightly contested as the one in 2000.
"We expect it to be a hard-fought, close election in a country narrowly divided," said Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's senior adviser. "When a Democratic nominee is finally selected, our expectation is that it could be a close and hard-fought race."
The decision to delay the start of advertising until about the time the Democrats settle on a nominee is a rejection of what had been a central element of President Bill Clinton's re-election campaign. Mr. Clinton began advertising 16 months before Election Day, in an effort to define the election before the Republicans chose an opponent.
Republicans said that would be a waste of money, given the battle taking place among the Democrats. Instead, aides to Mr. Bush said, their campaign would begin spending when a Democratic nominee starts to emerge from the primary battle, probably battered and very likely almost broke.
In what Republicans said was a pre-emptive effort to nullify Democratic attacks that are likely to gain more attention in the weeks ahead, Mr. Bush's political operation, using elected officials and party leaders, has begun to try to cast the Democratic candidates as excessively negative in their attacks on a personally popular president.
The headline on a Republican National Committee statement attacking the Democratic presidential debate of last Thursday night read: "Democrats So Desperate to Attack President Bush, They Will Say Just About Anything!"
As Senator George Allen of Virginia, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, put it in an interview: "The president is focused on doing his job, and the Democrats can focus on having their debates and who can be the most shrill."
The strategy is reminiscent of what Mr. Bush's advisers did in 2000, when they sought early on to raise questions about Al Gore's credibility as a way of undercutting any attack Mr. Gore sought to make as the campaign progressed.
The Bush campaign has churned ahead in raising money to finance what Republicans said would be a television advertising and get-out-the-vote operation unparalleled in presidential campaigns. Campaign officials said they are likely to report in the next few weeks that more than $80 million has been taken in since the start of re-election fund-raising in late June, roughly $50 million of it in the third quarter, which ends Tuesday.
Advisers to Mr. Bush said they expected the campaign to hit its fund-raising target of $170 million by the end of the winter. That would leave the president flush with cash and free from the need to spend so much time doing fund-raising events as he enters into a head-to-head matchup with whichever Democrat captures the nomination. That would mean that Mr. Bush would be able to avoid overtly partisan fund-raising appearances that might undermine his effort to portray himself as above the fray and tending to the business of the White House.
Against this backdrop, Republican officials were disdainful of the 10 Democrats seeking to challenge Mr. Bush. Their harsh characterization of the field was challenged by Democrats and independent observers as bluster, though it seems to have fed confidence bordering on hubris in Mr. Bush's camp when polls might suggest reason for worry.
"Each of them has relative strengths and weaknesses, but happily for us, in each case the relative weaknesses outweigh the relative strengths," said Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. "They're all Howard Dean now. They have adopted harsh, bitter, personal attacks as their approach. They are a party of protest and pessimism and offer no positive agenda of their own."
Like the Democrats, the Bush campaign is convinced that the election of 2004 could turn on a relative handful of votes in key states, as the election of 2000 did.
On Oct. 4, the campaign will bring together about 500 volunteers in Atlanta to train them in how to organize precincts, canvass voters and get them to the polls in Georgia. Similar events will eventually take place across the country as the campaign moves to place organizers on the ground in virtually every precinct in the nation.
Mindful that Mr. Bush drew under 50 percent of the vote last time — and that there may be no third-party candidate to drain support from the Democrats this time — Mr. Bush's advisers have been moving to expand their appeal among Hispanics, women and independent-minded suburbanites, and then turn those voters out at the polls.
They also have their eyes on more narrowly defined groups, like the estimated four million evangelical Christians who, they say, did not vote in 2000 and are considered almost certain to support Mr. Bush.
"This is the first time I know of that an incumbent president has undertaken a true grass-roots effort that penetrates precincts and neighborhoods instead of relying entirely on image and media," said Ralph Reed, chairman of the state Republican Party in Georgia and an adviser to the Bush campaign.
The campaign continues to hire new staff members. It recently settled on Terry Holt, a veteran Congressional aide and Republican operative, as the campaign spokesman.
Members of the president's political team said they were not overly worried about signs of deterioration in his standing. Mr. Bush is still in a stronger position now in the polls, they said, than either Ronald Reagan or Mr. Clinton was at this point in his first term.
In addition, the Democratic attacks on Mr. Bush in the last few weeks have to a large extent gone unanswered, one price of Mr. Bush's effort to present himself as unconcerned about what the Democrats are doing. And the political calendar means that Mr. Bush can capitalize on an enviable platform to rebut the Democrats in January: His State of the Union Message is expected to be delivered right around the time of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.
Still, uncertain about how events might shape the race over the next year, and always remembering the fall from political grace experienced by Mr. Bush's father, campaign officials said they were taking nothing for granted.
"The country is closely divided, we'll have an opponent who will run an aggressive campaign and who will be well funded," said Ken Mehlman, Mr. Bush's campaign manager.
In a fund-raising letter last week, Mr. Mehlman asked potential donors for money to offset what he said was more than $400 million in commitments by donors to liberal interest groups, a counterpoint to criticism that Mr. Bush's fund-raising is overkill.
To a large extent, though, this is a confident campaign, and its assuredness reflects its assessment that the Democrats have produced a weak field. Mr. Gillespie ticked through the candidates in an interview, offering an often disdainful critique.
He suggested that Gen. Wesley K. Clark's popularity would be fleeting. "We know his signature issue was the Iraq war, and he's flopping all over the deck on that right now," Mr. Gillespie said.
He played down the chances of Dr. Dean in a general election and said of Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri: "Every time I see him it feels like the 1980's."
Senator John Edwards of North Carolina has "shown himself to be fairly light as a candidate," Mr. Gillespie said, and he was equally dismissive of Senator Bob Graham of Florida.
He said Senator John Kerry had been "pretty wishy-washy; it's hard to tell what his policies are."
But citing the closely divided electorate and acknowledging the potential political appeal of the leading Democrats, Mr. Gillespie added: "Anyone who emerges as the Democratic nominee is a viable candidate. They'll have emerged from a group of 10 so they'll have to have done something right"
If Mr. Bush's team is guarding against hubris, it is not without reason. Mr. Rove underestimated the strength of Senator John McCain of Arizona in the New Hampshire primary in 2000, contributing to Mr. Bush's defeat there and forcing him to scramble to save the nomination. Mr. Bush regularly tells audiences at his fund-raisers around the country that he is "loosening up" for the campaign but that for now he remains focused on keeping the country safe and restoring prosperity. He still has no regular meetings with his campaign staff, his advisers say, only quick discussions at fund-raisers.
But Mr. Bush is acting like a candidate. He is flying around the country, usually twice a week, largely at taxpayer expense, for official events in states that are strategically important to him. He typically tacks a fund-raiser onto the trip, requiring the campaign to pick up part of the travel tab under a formula applied to political travel by presidents.
And his travel schedule has already given a strong indication of the states that the White House believes will be pivotal next year. Those include contested states he wishes to keep in his column, like Ohio and Florida, as well as those he most wants to wrest away from the Democrats, like Pennsylvania and Michigan.
His advisers said they also intended to broaden the map, competing in states that they believe are within their reach — in particular Oregon, Minnesota, New Mexico and Iowa.
At the moment, Mr. Bush is running well in the states he won in 2000, freeing him to spend time and money in the states that Mr. Gore won narrowly. There were nine states that Mr. Gore carried by particularly thin margins, and they represent 92 electoral votes next year. Since becoming president, Mr. Bush has traveled to the biggest prize among them, Pennsylvania, 22 times, more than any other state, while visiting another, Michigan, 11 times.
"We are much more likely to pick their pockets than they are to pick ours," Mr. Gillespie said.
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