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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One group might be called the litmus-test conservatives. Darkly pessimistic and hyperbolic, they tend to be single-issue oriented: pro-life, for example, or English-only. This group tends to equate the fate of America with the fate of their preferred issue; either you’re with them all the way or you’re a traitor to the cause. Bush will not do well with the litmus-test conservatives. He is pro-life but allows for exceptions in the case of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. He doesn’t bash homosexuals. He favors what he calls English-plus rather than English-only, which means that every child should learn to read English as well as “recognize the richness and benefits of other languages.” (Bush himself speaks Spanish well enough that when he was asked a question en español at a media availability before his commencement speech in Dallas, he responded in kind, though with occasional Spanglish phrases like “niños out of wedlock.”) The good news for Bush is that this constituency will be split among several candidates: Buchanan, Quayle, Bauer, and Ashcroft, who won a recent presidential straw poll in South Carolina with the help of the religious right. (Bush finished second.)
The family-values conservatives are the second group. Many of them hold views similar to litmus-test conservatives, only with less militance. On right-to-life issues, for example, many are coming to understand that it is better to win battles over partial-birth abortions, late-term abortions, and parental notification than to fight over when conception begins. Family-values conservatives are highly suspicious of government intervention in areas they regard as the family’s province, such as sex education and children’s health insurance. Bush will count on his own family ties and his character to earn him some support from this group.
Cultural conservatives, people who want to change values by changing the culture, make up the third group. Bush’s self-descriptive term is “compassionate conservative.” (“Compassionate” is shorthand for “not like Pat Buchanan.”) The cultural conservatives aren’t interested in turning doctors into criminals or stripping legal aliens of their government benefits. They are interested in changing the values of Americans, particularly young Americans. “I have seen the culture change once in my lifetime,” Bush said in Cincinnati. “I believe it can change again.” The values he advocates have little to do with government, except that government offers a bully pulpit: accepting individual responsibility, saying no to drugs and violence, abstaining from sex until you’ve found a person you want to marry. Speaking to the Plano High School graduating class at Southern Methodist University’s Moody Coliseum, he added two others: “Baseball should always be played outdoors with wooden bats” and “No matter how old you are and no matter what you do, you can never escape your mother.” This is the group on the right that Bush will do best with, simply because he is one of them.
Step 6: Develop a Winning Strategy
EVEN BEFORE HE MAKES THE DECISION to run, Bush is going to have to think about his campaign team. This much is certain: His presidential campaign will not look like one of his father’s. It will not be run by Jim Baker or anyone else from the old guard. Nor is it likely to be run by Karl Rove, the Austin political consultant who is Bush’s closest political adviser; Rove is more valuable in a guru role independent of a campaign organization. A recent Fortune magazine story about Bush reported that the finance co-chairs would be Brad Freeman of Los Angeles and Heinz Prechter of Detroit, which must have greatly amused Midland oilman Don Evans, the chairman of Bush’s gubernatorial campaign, who would have the financial duties in a presidential campaign.
Bush must also have a strategy in mind because his delayed entry into the presidential race will put him behind in Iowa and New Hampshire, traditionally the two most important states whose delegates are selected before March 1 of the election year. Deciding what to do about them is one of the hardest calls Bush (and Rove) will have to make. Iowa especially is a grind. Its delegates are chosen in caucuses, not in a primary. It requires time-consuming, person-to-person wooing of activists—retail politics instead of the wholesale politics of modern media campaigns. Bush’s money can’t help him there. New Hampshire used to be a retail politics state, but that is changing; now it requires persona and message as well as physical presence. A candidate can spend a lot of time and money there, only to find that a victory is worth a lot more in publicity than delegates.
What may not be widely understood yet is that Iowa and New Hampshire are not what they used to be. In 1988 and again in 1996 South Carolina proved to be a much more important state than New Hampshire. It started the stampede to the eventual winner—first Bush, then Dole. And anyway, the California Senate has already passed a bill that would move up the state’s primary in 2000 to March 7. Several western states are trying to coordinate their elections for the same day or perhaps a week earlier.
This compression of the election season means that Iowa and New Hampshire are nothing more than tidbits before the feast; so it’s possible that Bush will pass them up altogether, risk the media’s wrath at being deprived of an early test of the front-runner, and concentrate on California. He can count on Texas and, in all likelihood, Florida, where his brother Jeb should be elected governor this fall. Those three states have enough delegates to get him two-fifths of the way to the nomination.
Step 7: Make a Decision
TO MOST PEOPLE, BUSH’S DECISION IS A foregone conclusion: Of course he will run. The nomination is practically sitting there waiting for him. “I know in my bones he will run,” a member of his father’s White House team told me. “This is his life now.” The only people who have expressed any doubt to me are some of Bush’s aides, and that may well be part of the spin that he hasn’t made up his mind.
Still, one cannot spend much time talking to Bush about his future without sensing a real reluctance. “I’m not sure that I want to spend the rest of my life living in the bubble,” he told me. Bush does not like Washington. In 1988 he and his family moved there to be part of his father’s campaign for president. In 1992 he was part of the campaign again, but he continued to live in Texas. “He doesn’t like the scene, all the phony baloney,” said Republican consultant Mary Matalin, who was part of those campaigns. He makes no secret of his distaste for the chip-on-the-shoulder hostility of the Washington press corps. He loves being governor. He likes being able to run off to a ball game or drop in for a Sunday service at a black church now and then. He is having the time of his life. If he hasn’t made up his mind to run for president, it’s because he doesn’t want to face the decision. “I’ve never been a person who has had every chapter of my life planned out,” he told me. “A year before I ran [for governor], I wouldn’t have thought I was going to do it. I did not run for governor to be president of the United States.”
George W. Bush is very pleased with who he is, which has not always been the case. (Eleven years ago, he decided he was drinking too much and quit.) Can he run for president and stay the same person? “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Bush said as we returned to Austin from Brownwood in the twin-engine King Air 350 that he uses for his campaign trips. “You have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror.”
One option for Bush, if he does not run for president, is to make money—a lot of money, more even than the estimated $10 million he stands to get from his share of the sale of the Texas Rangers baseball team. But when I asked him about doing deals to get rich, he professed no interest. “I’ve got more money than I ever thought I’d have,” he said. “After a certain point, money is only good for giving away.”
“Then I think you’re going to run,” I said, as the plane made its final approach to Austin. “If you don’t have something else in mind, the momentum will just carry you along with it. It’s like what happened to me this spring. I only wanted to paint my house, not sell it, but the next thing I knew, the house was gone.”
“Houses don’t cry,” Bush said. I knew that was a reference to his sixteen-year-old twin girls, who don’t want to live their college years in the bubble. “I say in my speeches that parenting is the most important thing a person does. Parenting requires sacrifice. I believe that. It’s my legacy.”
An aide came up holding a cell phone. “Channel 36 is here,” she said. “They want to interview you.” Bush looked out the window as we taxied up and saw the camera crew. “What are they doing outside?” he said. “Find a better background.” And then he walked down the steps, and the camera closed in.
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