NY TIMES: "Bush's Advisers Focus on Dean as Likely Opponent Next Year"
nytimes.com
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: December 11, 2003
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 — President Bush's political advisers are now all but certain that Howard Dean will be the Democratic presidential nominee and they are planning a campaign that takes account of what they see as Dr. Dean's strengths and weaknesses, Republicans with ties to the White House said.
"We're ready to go," said a senior Republican official involved in the Bush campaign. "The broad thematics and the whole approach to him, those things have been well thought out. As for the tactical stuff, it's still out there. The timing is a big decision."
For months, members of Mr. Bush's political team said that the nine-person Democratic field was too jumbled to predict the outcome of the primaries, and they cautioned that the situation was fluid. But with Dr. Dean, in their view, pulling away from his Democratic rivals by all indicators — the polls, fund-raising and endorsements — Republicans said he was forcing the Bush campaign to begin making decisions about how and when to engage him.
A day after Al Gore endorsed Dr. Dean, giving the former Vermont governor his strongest claim yet to the role of front-runner for the nomination, Democrats as well as Republicans scrambled on Wednesday to assess and adapt to the changing political landscape. Dr. Dean's Democratic rivals sharpened their attacks on him, even as Republicans — perhaps motivated as much by a desire to guard against complacency in their ranks as by any newfound respect for Dr. Dean's electoral strength — talked of their plans for a tough general election faceoff against him.
One Republican who speaks regularly to White House officials said there was serious thought about pursuing the earliest and most aggressive of the plans under consideration: putting Mr. Bush into full campaign mode soon after he delivers the State of the Union address in late January. In that way, the Republican said, Mr. Bush could get a quick start on defining Dr. Dean as too far to the left for the country before the former Vermont governor can wrap up the primaries and begin trying to move himself toward the political center.
Other Republicans who are kept apprised of the Bush campaign's thinking said that the issue of timing continued to be hotly debated among Mr. Bush's advisers and that the president had not decided how quickly he wants to drop his strategy of remaining publicly detached from partisan warfare.
Throughout the year, many Republicans have been longing for a Bush-Dean matchup, saying Dr. Dean's opposition to the war with Iraq, his call for rolling back Mr. Bush's tax cuts and his support for civil unions between gay people would open the door to a Republican landslide in November.
Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's senior adviser and political strategist, was reported by The Washington Post this summer to have exhorted the crowd at his neighborhood Fourth of July parade to cheer for marchers wearing Dean T-shirts and carrying Dean signs. People close to Mr. Bush, who prides himself on his personal and political discipline, describe Dr. Dean as a sloppy candidate who gets himself in trouble too often by shooting from the hip and who is slow to clean up messes.
Still, Dr. Dean's ability to energize Democrats and potentially attract new voters, while raising large sums of money without the benefit of an established national reputation, has generated some concern within the Bush campaign, where much of the early betting had been on Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri as the most likely nominee. The campaign continues to warn against overconfidence among its supporters by stressing that the 2004 race could be as close as the one in 2000.
"They do not underestimate Dean, because Dean is able to stir the energy in the Democratic party grass roots," said Deal W. Hudson, the editor of Crisis Magazine and an influential religious conservative who is in regular contact with the White House. "That makes him potentially the most formidable of the Democratic nominees."
Gary Abernathy, executive director of the Republican party in West Virginia, a traditionally Democratic state that Mr. Bush won in 2000, said Dr. Dean would be way out of step with voters from both parties in that state on many issues. But, he said, the Democratic machine would no doubt unite around him.
"If Howard Dean is the candidate, is that a slam dunk for George W. Bush?" he said. "No, it is not."
Joe Trippi, Dr. Dean's campaign manager, said one reason the Dean campaign opted not to receive public campaign money was to give itself flexibility to respond to what it assumed would be an early Bush advertising onslaught starting in January or February. By opting out of the system, Dr. Dean was freed to raise as much money as he can during the primary campaign instead of being bound by federal spending limits.
"They're not afraid of Howard Dean, they're afraid of the hundreds of thousands of Americans that are building Howard Dean's campaign up," Mr. Trippi said. "Howard Dean is the only Democrat who's been able to rally all those Americans in common cause to beat Bush, and it's nice that they're noticing."
Republican officials said they were not yet stopping work on preparations for taking on the other Democratic candidates. But there was an emerging consensus among Mr. Bush's closest confidantes even before Mr. Gore's endorsement, they said, that Dr. Dean would be their opponent. "There is a broad belief among the president's political advisers at the White House and the campaign, from top to bottom, from Cheney to Mehlman to Karl and Andy and all the other players, that Dean is very likely, extremely likely, to be the candidate," said one Republican strategist who works closely with the White House. He was referring to Vice President Dick Cheney; Ken Mehlman, Mr. Bush's campaign manager; Mr. Rove; and Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff.
The Bush campaign's official line remains that whichever Democrat emerges victorious from the primaries will be a formidable candidate if only because the nation is so closely and passionately divided politically. Given Mr. Bush's dislike for seeing his aides and advisers quoted about strategy and tactics, few Republican officials were willing to be quoted by name about the plans for running against Dr. Dean.
But the Republican National Committee and the Bush campaign are intensively reviewing their opposition research on Dr. Dean. The party is conducting polling not just on how Mr. Bush would match up against Dr. Dean but also on what effects Dr. Dean, as his party's presidential nominee, would have on other races, especially for Senate seats.
Republican inside and outside the campaign are studying parallels between Dr. Dean's candidacy and other insurgent campaigns, including those of Senator Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and of Senator John McCain of Arizona, who nearly derailed Mr. Bush's march to the Republican nomination in 2000. |
