The chocolate cake was barely cleared when news started arriving by way of the cellular phones and pagers that Bush (who loathes them) had permitted so that Rove and his deputy, Ken Mehlman, could get returns. Republican congressional leaders watched a small TV, which was placed on a sideboard and tuned to the White House’s favorite network, Fox. When word arrived early that brother Jeb had won big in Florida, Bush took a call from his father and brother in Miami, where they were celebrating family vindication. “I hope he didn’t win by too much,” the president joked. “I don’t want to be embarrassed.” He wasn’t. He celebrated when the GOP saved the pivotal Colorado Senate seat, and when he got estimates that the House would not only remain in Republican hands but would add GOP seats. Bush whooped with joy when Republicans clinched Senate control by winning Missouri. By 1:20 a.m., the last of the guests were gone, Laura was asleep, but Bush (who normally goes to bed at 10) was still trolling for returns. After walking the dogs, he turned in at 2, and slept late for the first time at the White House.
By the time he awoke he was no longer the Accidental President. He was Top Gun, with (for now) the backing he needed to pursue his tough-talking vision of the war against terrorism at home and abroad. The story of his triumph has its roots in a campaign plan put into place long before 9-11, and that became an unprecedented mix of grass-roots politics, congressional policymaking and global diplomacy–each reinforcing the other in a widening gyre of power.
By last August, NEWSWEEK has learned, Bush & Co. essentially had their interlocking, three-part game plan in place: to raise the stakes and lengthen the debate on our dealings with Iraq, to press the Democrats to accept the White House version of a Department of Homeland Security (and hammer them if they opposed it) and to deploy both issues to burnish the president’s popularity with the GOP faithful, to whom Bush would appeal in coast-to-coast campaigning in the final weeks of the 2002 campaign.
The plan paid off. For the first time since 1934 (in FDR’s first term), a president led his party to gains in both chambers of Congress two years into his first term. His Democratic opposition was left divided and confused, groping for ways to oppose a leader they had dismissed as a dimwitted usurper after the disputed election of 2000. And his domestic victory was only half of the story. Three days after the election, following two months of prodding, the U.N. Security Council unanimously supported a sternly worded resolution that gave Bush wide latitude to attack Saddam Hussein if the Iraqi dictator doesn’t disarm by next February. Even Syria voted yes. “He had the equivalent of two presidencies in one week,” crowed chief of staff Andy Card. “On Tuesday, he showed he is leading the country,” said another top administration aide. The U.N. vote “showed he is leading the world.”
The president wasted no time warning Saddam that his options were running out, and there was rising speculation in Washington about the specifics of the Pentagon assault plan, in the good chance that Iraq fails to comply with the U.N. ultimatum.
The tone was far different in domestic politics. Bush was quick to order a ban on post-election gloating, and his aides were equally quick to downplay the magnitude of the victory, noting (as did their critics) that a switch of 150,000 votes would have kept the Senate in Democratic hands. Midterm elections are comparatively low-turnout affairs, and the GOP had triumphed largely by motivating the Republican faithful, who adore Bush with an ardor unseen since the days of Ronald Reagan. A presidential election–which will require Bush to reach out to independents and even to Democrats–is another matter. “I don’t want to overemphasize the volume of the shift,” Rove told NEWSWEEK. “The change in the American political scene is incremental and small, and our hope is that it is persistent. But we’ll only know that retrospectively.”
In a press conference, Bush was suitably low key, stressing the role of GOP candidates–not his own–and vowing to seek a new era of bipartisan cooperation with the Democrats as he touts legislation to create a Department of Homeland Security, to lower taxes further, deal with prescription drugs and balance the budget. As if to prove his desire for cooperation, he made a chatty phone call to Mark Pryor of Arkansas, the only Democrat to take a Senate seat from the Republicans–and Bush aides promptly distributed a picture of him making it.
The new NEWSWEEK Poll illustrates why Bush should tread carefully. Despite the GOP’s success, his approval rating had diminished to 60 percent, still high by historical standards but his lowest since 9-11. His “re-elect” number was 48 percent, hardly an overwhelming level as he and his aides begin to plan for the 2004 campaign. He wins a test match against Al Gore by a 54-39 percent margin, which says more about the Democrats’ weakness than his own unassailability. Voters cite a prescription-drug plan for seniors as their top legislative priority–an idea that voters trust Democrats more than Republicans to implement. And by a 2-1 margin, voters want the drug plan to be run by Medicare and not, as the president prefers, by private-sector health-care providers.
Still, the magnitude of the Republicans’ victory was remarkable–even if it was accomplished by overpowering a Democratic Party bereft of leadership and new ideas. The GOP’s overall vote margin in the congressional races was the largest since 1994: there were 35 million votes cast for GOP candidates, compared with 31 million for the Democrats. By historical standards, the GOP should have lost some 22 House seats and two Senate seats–the post-World War II average loss by a president’s party in the first midterm after his election. Instead (and pending a runoff election for Senate in Louisiana), the GOP gained two seats in the Senate and five in the House. Democrats picked up some impressive governorships–in old-line industrial states such as Pennsylvania, Illinois and Michigan, and new-style industrial states such as Tennessee. But the GOP solidified its hold on the South, winning governorships in South Carolina and (for the first time in modern history) in Georgia. Rove pointed with pride to the results from the grass roots, the state legislatures. The president’s party usually loses about 350 such seats in a midterm; the Republicans had netted an increase of 200, and not just in the South.
The story of how Bush pulled this off is both simple and complex, the consequence of events beyond the president’s control–Al Qaeda’s attack on America–and his own methodical and disciplined nature. He and Rove were quick to grasp after 9-11 that a new-era war was not only a grave challenge to the country but a political opportunity for a commander in chief and a Republican Party comfortable (in ways the Democrats generally are not) with a Manichaean view of the world and a willingness to use force as an instrument of policy.
The president’s early triumphs were personal and dramatic: Bush with a bullhorn on the rubble of the Twin Towers, Bush leading the nation in prayer, Bush accepting the risk of saying “Let’s roll” in Afghanistan. But these were translated into electoral and diplomatic victories last week by a process that was corporate and prosaic, the result of endless planning meetings that had all the drama of a product rollout in Cincinnati.
Long before 9-11–indeed, in the first weeks after Inauguration–GOP strategists met to plot an assault on the Senate, which, at the time, was divided 50-50 and in their hands only by virtue of Vice President Dick Cheney’s tie-breaking vote. In the winter of 2001, NEWSWEEK has learned, the GOP’s Senatorial Campaign Committee quietly conducted polls in 10 states with upcoming Senate races–states deemed to possess a “geographical advantage” for the party. These included “Red States” the president had won handily (among them North Carolina, Georgia and Arkansas) and those thought to be trending the GOP’s way (including New Jersey and Rove’s holy grail of 2002, Minnesota). More important, and more remarkably, the party secretly tested the “favorability” ratings of possible GOP contenders in those states. The idea, said Sen. Bill Frist, who heads the committee, was to be able to recruit “candidates with stature and experience.” In other words, best bets.
Loyalty and ideology matter to Bush, but so does polling information. Armed with the numbers, Team Bush set about moving the chess pieces around the 2002 campaign board, clearing primary fields here, wooing reluctant entrants there. In North Carolina, NEWSWEEK has learned, Frist began recruiting Elizabeth Dole (still living in Washington at the time) in the summer of 2001–barely a year after she dropped her own challenge to Bush for the GOP presidential nomination and long before the incumbent senator, Jesse Helms, announced his retirement. The White House made it clear, early and often, that Dole was its choice, avoiding what could –have been a more divisive primary. Elsewhere–South Dakota is one example–Team Bush persuaded their market-tested favorite to run for the Senate, rather than for governor. Bush and Rove made a special project out of Norm Coleman in Minnesota, persuading Tim Pawlenty, who wanted to run, to seek the governorship instead.
Prodigious early fund-raising is a Bush hallmark. He was able to stomp the Republican presidential field in 2000 by amassing an unheard-of $100 million before the campaign had begun. Ditto in 2002. Bush and Cheney traveled the country through last summer, starring at fund-raisers that helped net the various Republican campaign committees record amounts of cash–$527 million, compared with $343 million for the Democrats. With extra dough, extensive polling and real-time monitoring of Democratic ad buys, the White House was able to funnel last-minute aid to down-to-the-wire Senate races–including winning GOP efforts in New Hampshire and Georgia–and away from those that weren’t really close, such as Texas. The Democrats tried to do the same thing, of course, but had fewer resources and less centralized, real-time information. And they wasted valuable resources in a temporarily gratifying, but ultimately vain, effort to topple Jeb Bush.
The events of 9-11 gave the GOP an admired leader, but also a unifying, over-arching theme to run on: security. To make sure no one missed the point, Rove (and wordsmith Karen Hughes) summarized the president’s post-attack agenda in three parts last spring: “national security, homeland security and economic security.” Rove made it clear to Republican operatives and state chairmen that, while the economy and social issues were important in the mid-terms, the party was best off relying on Bush’s favorable ratings as the commander in chief and leader of the war on terror.
A genial sort, seemingly casual about details, Bush is actually a methodical executive with a penchant–almost an obsession–for planning. Last August, his inner circle gathered in Crawford, Texas, to “plan the fall,” as one aide later put it. The first decision, made Aug. 8, was to keep Iraq front and center for months, not by dropping Daisy Cutters on Baghdad but by going on a long, stately march through Congress and the United Nations. Ironically, it was a course that liberal Democrats were demanding–not realizing it would be turned against them.
For the diplomatic route had multiple benefits for Bush–and the GOP. It would be easier to get congressional approval before Election Day, since many wavering Democrats hail from Red States Bush won in 2000. Holding the debate then also would focus the campaign on the president’s political strength, his role as wartime leader. A congressional mandate, in turn, would give Bush more clout with the United Nations–clout that could be further amplified by victories in the midterm races. Rove, a self-taught polymath with a deep sense of history and a jeweler’s eye for policy detail, participated in the planning–and knew how to best take advantage of the results: he and Mehlman put together a strenuous presidential travel schedule for the fall, though it was carefully tailored to minimize overnights on the road. “The president would have to bear the brunt if we lost, whatever he did or didn’t do,” Rove told NEWSWEEK. “We decided that he ought to be engaged. At least that way he’d have a better chance to beat the history.”
As Nov. 5 approached, Republicans unpacked an unprecedented get-out-the-vote drive called “The 72-Hour Task Force,” assembled after two years of careful study of what they–and Democrats–had done well in recent elections. The answer: a back-to-the-future effort that eschewed automated phone banks in favor of personal calls and front-door visits. Big Labor, a past master of such tactics, did its best, but Democratic turnout lagged, especially among minority voters.
But what turned out to be the pivotal moment in the election came in late September, when the president and Senate Democrats failed to reach a compromise on the symbolic heart of the 2002 campaign, the homeland-security bill. Another irony: Bush initially resisted the idea of creating such a department, and had been talked into it by moderate Democrats, among them Sen. Joe Lieberman and Rep. Jane Harman. But the White House insisted on following a plan devised by former senators Warren Rudman and Gary Hart, which called for greatly limiting the role of federal employee unions in the vast new department. At least one Democrat, Zell Miller of Georgia, wanted to go along, but Tom Daschle–under pressure from labor unions and incensed at what he saw as a cynical effort to divide his party–said no. Bush, for his part, claimed to be upset, too.
On the other hand, he and Rove had gained an issue, which they drove mercilessly. In several Red States, Democratic candidates were accused of being soft on “homeland security,” their faces shown in TV ads featuring Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Often, without soothing caveats, the president said Democrats were more interested in “special interests” than the security of Americans–which left Daschle sputtering with rage. To sharpen the point, Bush began including specific examples in his final stump speeches of how Big Labor’s work rules would supposedly hamper the new department’s terrorist-fighting efforts. “The issue resonated,” Rove said happily, adding that he credits at least two GOP wins–in Georgia and Missouri–to the Dems’ defense of the unions.
Once the votes were counted, in ballot boxes and at the United Nations, Bush repaired for the weekend to Camp David. The patterns of his public life were repeating themselves, patterns established when he ran for governor of Texas and for president, and when he launched the war on terrorism with an attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan. Once again, he’d been underestimated–and exceeded expectations. Once again, he’d planned meticulously–and stuck doggedly to his game plan. Once again, he’d made few mistakes–far fewer than his enemies assumed he would. Now, at Camp David, he was back into his fitness regimen, lifting weights in the gym, jogging in the woods, even challenging his aides in bowling. There were no big meetings on the agenda, according to Card. At the Pentagon, meanwhile, Donald Rumsfeld & Co. were tinkering with their war plans. And Rove was already crunching the 2002 numbers, looking for clues. From the president’s point of view, 2004 was not far away.
