Sunday, December 17, 2000

By James O'Toole, Politics Editor, Post-Gazette

"I'm a uniter, not a divider," George W. Bush frequently reminded us.

After the longest, most expensive and, arguably, most unpredictable presidential campaign in history, the Texas governor, and, at long last, president-elect, will have ample opportunity to prove that.

	On the move / Texas Gov. George W. Bush entered the campaign flush with cash from a GOP establishment that saw him as a personable candidate untainted by the poisoned political atmosphere in Washington. Here he displays some body language while bowling in Nashua, N.H. (Eric Draper, Associated Press)

He will take the oath of office to preside over an electorate divided evenly between its preference for him and his chief opponent. His ascension follows an election that reflected the nation's sharp divisions along lines of race, gender and geography.

It was an election waged in the context of a decade-long economic boom that seemed to have anesthetized most of the country to the toxic partisanship and bitterness that had consumed the political classes of Washington through impeachment and government shutdowns.

One of the prime arguments for the candidacy of the affable Texan was his vow to shift the tone in Washington, to discourage the scorched-earth tactics that seemed to make every Washington political dispute degenerate into litigation.

It will not be easy, as Bush takes office after a post-balloting brawl replete with mutual charges of intimidation, illegitimacy and election theft. The path to confirmation of his crucial Florida victory became a full-employment program for lawyers.

But at least the equipoise that propelled this election from the ballot boxes to the courts was not the product of passionate ideological battles or deeply polarizing personalities. Policy differences were confined to a relatively narrow slice near the center of the political spectrum.

Bush proclaimed himself a conservative, but a "compassionate" one, and he avoided the ideological militancy that had sent Newt Gingrich's negative numbers soaring. Gore relied on populist rhetoric, but, to the occasional frustration of more liberal members of his party, advanced the policies of a centrist New Democrat.

From the perspective of arithmetic, the division in Election 2000 is clear. The new president captured the White House with a bare majority of 271 electoral votes, while losing the popular vote by a small margin. He will work with a Congress similarly split down the middle: a 50-50 Senate; and a House in which his own party is clinging by its fingernails to a five-seat advantage.

The stage for that shaky victory was set by a one-vote margin at the U.S. Supreme Court, overruling a one-vote decision by Florida's high court.

But all this division may be more of a matter of numbers than of conflicting beliefs. In the face of the major parties' ideological evolution and the competition by two relatively uncharismatic candidates trying to appeal to the middle, many voters simply seemed to have a hard time making up their minds.

The campaign begins

President Clinton ousted the father of the Texas governor in 1992, but the 1990s brought plenty of good news to the GOP, as well. Republicans took over the Congress for the first time in 40 years in the midterm election of 1994. GOP strength grew in state legislatures across the country. Nearly two-thirds of Americans lived in states with Republican governors.

But as the decade wore on, most of the good news for the party came from outside Washington. In 1995, the Gingrich-led GOP partisans, emboldened by their victory the previous year, shut the federal government down in a budget face-off with Clinton. They blinked before the president did, and they paid for it at the ballot box.

In 1996, Clinton coasted to re-election, and the strength of the economy that would boom on through his second administration was a big plus for Gore.

The downside of Gore's Clinton ties was just coming into view in the last weeks of the 1996 campaign, with charges of fund-raising abuses by the Democrats.

Still to surface were names such as Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp and Kenneth Starr. The impeachment scandal would tarnish Clinton's place in history and serve as a drag on Gore's chances to succeed him. But the issue was a double-edged sword, as congressional Republicans found when they lost seats in 1998 as their efforts to campaign on the scandal turned off many voters.

	Heir apparent / Vice President Al Gore figured his long experience and economic prosperity would propel him effortlessly to the democratic nomination. Bill Bradley put up a spirited fight, but faded fast. (Charles Krupa, Associated Press)

To many members of the Republican establishment outside Washington, Texas Gov. George W. Bush was seen as the antidote to that politically poisoned atmosphere. The Texas governor didn't have the longest resume in GOP politics. But he had cultivated a reputation for attracting Democratic support on the way to his landslide election to a second term. As the son of the former president he had instant name recognition.

Through 1999, Bush continued to attract support from party leaders, notably his fellow governors and the deep pockets of the GOP's big contributors. He was well on his way to amassing the war chest that would allow him to decline federal matching funds for the primary season. That, in turn, enabled him to confront his competition unfettered by the state-by-state limits on primary spending that are imposed on candidates who accept the federal campaign aid.

The Iowa edge

Over the last three decades, Iowa has become the starting blocks for the presidential race.

In 1972, the first year of the early February Iowa caucus schedule, the returns were received without fanfare in a back room behind the Democratic Party's downtown Des Moines office.

Since then, the caucuses have grown into a gargantuan production attracting millions of dollars, hundreds of reporters, and candidate pilgrimages that start more than a year in advance.

That's the process that gave former President George Bush what he described as "big mo" in 1980 -- and just short of 20 years later, the younger Bush moved quickly to set up the most extensive, sophisticated organization the state had ever seen.

The Iowa caucus process has long been controversial. Why, its critics ask, should this atypical homogenous state have such an outsized influence on the selection of the president? But the caucuses are the epitome of fairness and rationality compared with an even earlier Iowa event -- the straw poll -- that assumed a crucial role in winnowing the GOP field for 2000.

In the summer of 1999, Bush's high poll numbers and financial advantages were clear, but he had yet to be tested by voters outside his state. Many observers still saw the GOP contest as relatively fluid -- so wide open, in fact, that it had attracted a dozen formal or informal candidates. They included the millionaire Steve Forbes; Pat Buchanan, the conservative who had been a force in the previous two GOP nomination battles; Elizabeth Dole, the former transportation secretary and spouse of the party's last nominee; and, in a gift to political cartoonists and late-night comics everywhere, former Vice President Dan Quayle.

As a fund-raising and party-building tool, the Iowa GOP appropriated the state fairgrounds in August 1999 for a presidential straw poll. Any Iowa Republican could vote so long as he or she bought a $25 ticket.

Bush won big.

Buchanan would soon migrate to the Reform Party. Quayle and former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, both of whom had banked on grass-roots organizations in Iowa, dropped out as well. Dole, her campaign starved for funds, would soon follow. The straw poll went a long way toward performing the winnowing chore that the caucuses themselves had performed in previous years. Before a single official vote was cast, the potential GOP field was cut in half.

Gore goes populist

Gore's supporters had started his Iowa groundwork even earlier.

He had skipped the caucuses during his abortive presidential run in 1988. But he devoted plenty of attention to them this time round. Throughout his vice presidential tenure, Gore cultivated the state's activists, raised money for its Democratic legislators, sent Christmas cards all over the state.

Several Democrats had made noises about running for the Democratic nomination. But in the end, the only one to challenge Clinton's heir apparent was former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey. In the Senate, Bradley had compiled a mainstream centrist record. But in some respects, he ran against Gore from the left, particularly in his call for a system of tax credits to allow universal health care coverage.

Bradley criticized the Clinton-Gore health care record. He mocked Gore's wonkish immersion in the details of policies across the range of government. Instead, Bradley promised to concentrate his presidency on a few Big Ideas, such as improved race relations and universal health care.

Despite Gore's long cultivation of the state, Bradley clearly thought he could sneak up on the vice president in the caucuses.

Gore, meanwhile, had suffered continual criticism of his campaign organization and persona throughout the summer of 1999.

He tried to reinvent his campaign by moving his headquarters from the lobbyist lairs of Washington back to his former political base in Nashville.

This symbolic return to his roots would not be requited in electoral votes there the following fall, but it seemed to pay off in the short term. On the stump, Gore became a more aggressive, effective candidate.

Gore made subtle adjustments in his apparel to complement his new sleeves-rolled-up campaign style. Mixed with the Washington uniform of blue suits and white shirts were fashion-forward earth-toned suits along with khakis and jeans.

Meanwhile, Bradley proved a surprisingly maladroit candidate. In a Des Moines debate just three weeks before the caucuses, Gore attacked his challenger for voting against rural flood relief. Bradley wasn't able to rebut the criticism, even though Gore had seized on Bradley's vote against a single amendment to an overall relief bill that Bradley had supported.

Days before the Iowa election on which he had waged so large a bet, Bradley's attempts to get his message out were obscured by reports that he had suffered a recurrence of an irregular heart beat. The condition was not life-threatening physically, but it was nearly fatal politically.

Gore, buoyed by newfound energy -- along with the backing of the union and Democratic Party establishments -- surged ahead.

Enter John McCain

As the caucuses and primaries drew closer, Bush's evident strength had allowed him, at least for the time being, to avoid stepping on one of the traditional land mines of the nominating process. Former President Richard Nixon's widely noted advice to Republican candidates was to run to the right during the primaries and tack back to the center in the general election. Bush resisted the temptation to cater to the right.

Through the wintry early weeks of 2000, Bush projected a big-tent version of Republicanism. At one of the final Iowa debates, he shrugged off the taunts of conservative candidate Gary Bauer, who demanded that Bush pledge to make opposition to abortion a litmus test for Supreme Court nominees.

Bush's sense of political security was due for a reality check.

The same weekend as that debate, Joe Andrew, chairman of the Democratic Committee, was in Des Moines staging a bit of political theater. He led a gaggle of reporters and television cameras across a restaurant parking lot to witness a steamroller labeled, "Bush Tax Cut," steered by a Democrat in a George Bush mask, rolling over a tool box labeled, "Social Security Lock Box."

On its second try, the steamroller managed to shatter the box.

One of Gore's key Iowa organizers shook his head when the scene was described to him. He faulted the skit not for its sophomoric tone, but for its target.

"I think those DNC guys are making a mistake attacking Bush," he said. "I'd be more worried about running against the other guy."

The other guy was Sen. John McCain. Citing a lack of resources, the Vietnam War hero and former POW decided to skip the Iowa competition and instead concentrate on New Hampshire, which would vote a week later.

New Hampshire, like several of the early Republican primaries, permitted crossover voting by independents and Democrats. The Arizona senator had compiled a strongly conservative record, but his appeal crossed party lines.

Some analysts noted that as Bradley's Iowa weakness became increasingly apparent, some of his New Hampshire support from independents migrated not to Gore but to McCain.

That phenomenon proved an omen for the general election. Gore and Bush secured their respective party bases in both New Hampshire and Iowa, as they would in the general election. But for many independents and swing voters, the more attractive candidates were Bradley and McCain.

Gore and Bush came out of Iowa buoyed by landslide victories. Gore would beat Bradley again in New Hampshire, although not by as large a margin. But Bush barely had time to savor his Iowa victory.

Crack in the facade

McCain had spent virtually all his time in New Hampshire. He had carpet-bombed the state with inspirational biographical videotapes. And it paid off. Buttressed by the support of many independents and Democrats, his campaign notched a decisive 18-point victory.

A winning personality and a big-tent philosophy had been among the most powerful engines of Bush's candidacy. Money was another. But until New Hampshire, Bush also had drawn crucial momentum from a sense of inevitability.

For one tense and increasingly bitter month, McCain changed that.

Democratic rules barred any state, except for the traditional gatekeepers of Iowa and New Hampshire, from choosing delegates before March 7. There were no similar restrictions on the Republican side, where several states would choose delegates in the weeks between New Hampshire and Super Tuesday.

The result was that the political and media spotlight temporarily shifted almost exclusively to the GOP side.

Delaware held a little-noticed GOP primary the week after New Hampshire, but the prime focus for the campaigns and the media was South Carolina, where Bush and McCain would face off on Feb 19. By then, every other candidate except Alan Keyes had dropped out of the Republican field.

A chastened Bush now found it necessary to heed Nixon's advice. His campaign shifted to the right in South Carolina. Almost his first stop in the state was Bob Jones University, a citadel of Christian fundamentalism where interracial dating was banned and where a former university president had condemned Roman Catholicism as a cult.

McCain, proclaiming himself a champion of reform, charged around the state giving interview after interview on his campaign bus, the "Straight Talk Express."

Rebounding from New Hampshire, the Bush campaign tried to preempt the challenger's rhetoric as well as his stagecraft. Bush rallies now took place in front of a giant banner sporting his new campaign slogan, "A Reformer with Results." He rode a bus called the "Victory Express." He suddenly embraced the town meeting format that had brought success to both McCain and Gore.

Bare knuckles show

Through the winter, the Republican race had remained fairly civil.

South Carolina changed that. Things got rough fast.

Bush professed outrage at a McCain ad comparing his veracity to Clinton's. McCain was the brunt of e-mail and whispering campaigns charging that he was wavering in his opposition to abortion.

It was the most expensive, hardest-fought primary in the state's history. In the end, Bush rose from the canvas of his New Hampshire defeat to deliver a body blow to McCain's insurgent candidacy. The senator conceded in a remarkably bitter speech, full of indignation and invective at Bush's tactics. It seemed his colorful campaign had run out of gas.

But three days later, Michigan's Republican Party had another primary. Bush's forces felt secure there, in part because of his support from the state's energetic governor, John Engler. But Michigan, like New Hampshire and South Carolina, allowed crossover voting by independents and Democrats.

Since there was no Democratic contest competing for their attention that day, many chose to vote in the GOP primary, most of them for McCain.

It was another sharp-elbowed contest. In a controversial speech, McCain denounced Christian conservative icons Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as voices of intolerance. Robertson, himself a former GOP presidential candidate, repaid the favor with thousands of recorded phone calls critical of McCain. McCain's supporters filled the phone lines with calls reminding Catholic voters of Bush's appearance at Bob Jones University.

McCain shocked just about everyone and won Michigan -- along with a same-day victory in his home state of Arizona. Recrimination and doubt returned to the Bush campaign.

They would be exorcised by Bush's commanding showing two weeks later.

Until March 7, the nomination fights had been rewarded chiefly in the currencies of momentum and publicity. On March 7, Super Tuesday, the real prize, convention delegates, came to the fore. Sixteen states conducted primaries or caucuses for both parties that day.

The balloting fell on Mardi Gras, and was a fat Tuesday indeed for the well-financed frontrunners who could fight on many fronts simultaneously.

Bush and Gore swept the table. On that day, both parties' nominations were effectively decided.

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