Wyatt’s World: Slideshow 
President Bush?
He says he hasn’t made up his mind to run. But he acts like a candidate. Can George W. Bush be the next president? Here’s how.
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How big is huge? In 1994 Bush beat Richards by 8 percentage points, 54 to 46, aided by a tidal wave of new suburban votes. It is unlikely that Mauro can come close to matching Richards’ showing; Bush has had as much as a 50-point lead over him in early polls. Every factor is on Bush’s side: name, money, record, star quality, demographics (the suburbs are still booming). Bob Bullock, the retiring Democratic lieutenant governor, has endorsed Bush. State comptroller John Sharp, the Democratic nominee to replace Bullock, has declined to endorse Mauro. This has the makings of a rout. Republican spinmeisters, who would like to lower the expectations for Bush so that he can exceed them, keep saying the race will tighten and Bush’s percentage of the vote will end up in the upper fifties. Nice try. If the turnout is normal, anything below 60 percent would be a lackluster showing.
To build that margin, Bush has spent the spring traveling to small towns across Texas. I accompanied him on one swing to Eastland and Brownwood after a commencement speech in Dallas. He has become a much better campaigner than he was four years ago. He works a crowd the old-fashioned way, going through it rather than waiting for the people to come to him. He makes eye contact and holds it; I followed him around the room in Eastland and I never once saw his eyes stray from a voter to survey the room. Bush is a toucher: He doesn’t shake a hand so much as grab it; he leans in close, clutches an arm, pats a shoulder, gives a hug. “Hey, buddy,” he’ll say, or “’Preciate your takin’ the time.” His accent is thicker in rural Texas than it is in Dallas, and his comments are folksier. “There’s nothin’ worse than a hot air politician on a hot day,” he said in Eastland, promising the coatless crowd of 150 people who had gathered in a non-air-conditioned meeting hall that his remarks would be brief. A visit from the governor is a big deal in these towns; the mayor of Brownwood made a point of mentioning how often Bush had visited. Bush will run well in rural Texas in November.
More is at stake in the size of Bush’s margin than his own reputation as a vote getter. Agriculture commissioner Rick Perry, the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, is counting on Bush’s coattails to pull him through to victory over the formidable Sharp; the more Bush wins by, the greater Perry’s chance of winning. This race is important to Bush’s presidential prospects, because if he were to win the White House, the lieutenant governor would succeed him. If Sharp wins, Texas Republicans will not be pleased with the idea of turning over the statehouse, and the national media line will be that Bush is putting his own ambitions ahead of the good of his party. How many GOP primary voters across America will actually let the loss of the Texas governorship affect how they vote for president? Not many. But the accretion of negative stories can dim a candidate’s star. Just ask California governor Pete Wilson, who faced the same problem four years ago—although, unlike Bush, he didn’t have much shine to dim.
Step 3: Fly Above the Flock
BUSH IS WINNING A RACE THAT HE isn’t in. What could be better? The longer he can stay apart from the Republican field, the better off he is. He shortens the obstacle course: fewer questions to answer, fewer positions to take, less risk of committing a gaffe. The other candidates, even the major ones, all have something to prove. For Steve Forbes, it’s that he’s not an amateur any more. For Newt Gingrich, it’s that he really is a swell fellow. For Lamar Alexander, it’s that he does have a message after all. For Dan Quayle, it’s that he’s not a dunce. The remainder of the field has even more-basic concerns, such as being able to raise enough money to get their campaigns off the ground. At the moment the list of possible contenders is long: senators Fred Thompson, John McCain, John Ashcroft, and Bob Smith; governors Wilson, George Pataki, and John Engler; congressmen Gingrich and John Kasich; veterans Quayle, Alexander, and Jack Kemp; conservative activists Pat Buchanan and Gary Bauer; and of course, magazine publisher Forbes. Some of them will be out of the race before Bush gets in. Still more won’t make it to the first primaries.
Staying above the fray helps Bush in Texas too. It makes it easier for Democrats to support him in November and for Democratic legislators to support his program next spring. The downside to waiting is that it gives him less time to raise money and build an organization. Not to worry. Although Bush plays down his family’s political connections—at the media availability in Cincinnati, he said, “I hope to convince a few of Dad’s friends that I’m okay and pick off a few of his enemies”—he knows that he can count on the financial and organizational network his father built over the years. He will be able to raise all the money he needs to run for president.
Step 4: Develop National Themes
ANOTHER REASON WHY IT IS TO BUSH’S advantage to stay above the fray for now is that he needs the time to turn himself into a national candidate. His first legislative program was a home run by state standards: a complete overhaul of the public education system, tort reform, welfare reform, tougher juvenile-justice laws. Of those issues, however, only welfare reform has much national appeal, and Texas was hardly a trailblazer; it followed the path laid out by Congress and other states. His second session was less successful. Bush’s ambitious property-tax reform was scaled back to an increase in the homestead exemption. (On the campaign trail, though, it reemerges as “the largest tax cut in Texas history.”) His initiatives to deregulate electricity and ban gambling machines failed.
This session will have to be better. Bush’s top priority is ending the social promotion of students, a hard-line program that, after an effective attack by Mauro, matured into teaching every child to read by the third grade. (The program didn’t change; the spin did.) He will ask the Legislature for $203 million for training teachers, diagnosing students’ problems, and establishing reading academies. This is as worthy a program as a state can undertake, and Bush believes in it totally. “What’s going to be the legacy of our generation?” he asked me. “It should be the best education system in the world. Education is freedom: It’s the best juvenile-justice system, the best welfare system.” As he spoke, he kept shaking his finger at me. It was the most intense moment of our conversation, by far.
Unfortunately for Bush, public education is neither a national issue nor a major concern of most Republicans; as a party, the GOP has all but given up on public schools and embraces alternatives such as vouchers. But he thinks he has found a way to make some political capital out of education: Wrap it in the larger national theme of limited government. “I believe government should do a few things and do them well,” he said in his Brownwood speech. “It has to set priorities. My top priority is education. When I was elected, the state had something like thirty education goals. Now I’ve refined it to one: excellence in reading for every child.”
His other major proposal will be more tax cuts, an ever-popular GOP theme. Bush will ask the Legislature to grant a franchise-tax exemption to 176,000 small business owners with annual sales under $100,000. The cost is a relatively small $35 million. He also wants a franchise-tax credit for companies doing research and development in Texas. That is a big-ticket item, about $227 million. He would like to see a cut in a consumer tax if enough money is left over. “I’m not going to be the guy who promises something he can’t deliver,” he said. “I don’t believe in ‘ready, fire, aim.’”
Step 5: Don’t Pander To the Right Wing
THE BIGGEST PROBLEM FOR BUSH IS whether he can make inroads into the large right-wing vote without taking positions that will lose the respect or the allegiance of mainstream conservatives. The Bush forces are convinced that they can. They see the right not as a monolithic constituency of identical thinkers but as a loose coalition of overlapping constituencies that have in common a concern for the decline of values in American life.
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