"The Evolver"

You've probably heard about Robert Draper's book Dead Certain, in which the author got a remarkable amount of access to President Bush. If you haven't bought the book yet, you can read an excerpt from the excerpt that Texas Monthly will be publishing in its October issue, which covers how Bush went from deciding to run for Governor to deciding to run for President. It's here for the usual limited time only. I found it fascinating, and more than once wanted to build a time machine so I could travel back to 1994 and beat some sense into Ann Richards' campaign team.

For years, Bush's stunning 53--46 victory over the mighty Richards would be seen by some as a referendum on Clinton, part of the Newt Gingrich tidal wave that washed away scores of Democrats great and small. Mainly, though, it would be hailed as a triumph of ferocious discipline--the challenger inseparable from those four issues, his "Roman candle" temper never once igniting as he waded obliviously through the rivers of kerosene Governor Richards poured with her incessant references to "Shrub" and other Molly Ivins inspirations. It would be remembered for [Karl] Rove's crafty incursion into the yellow-dog-Democrat territory of East Texas, where allegiances were wobbly to Hollywood Ann, what with her alleged posse of lesbians and her rumored druggie past.

Unremembered would be the Bush campaign's missteps--so many of them early on that [Jim] Francis and Rove sacked nearly the entire staff in the spring of 1994, bringing in the burly Joe Allbaugh from Oklahoma and a former TV reporter and state Republican party director named Karen Hughes to right the foundering vessel. Forgotten as well were the clunky early speeches Rove wrote for George W. and the latter's tendency to bark out alarming declarations on the stump like "I am a capitalist!" before Message Dominatrix Hughes curbed his tongue.

For all the Rove/Hughes/Allbaugh Iron Triangle's shrewdness, the Bush campaign was far from seasoned. Its policy director, Vance McMahan, had not worked a day in politics or government. Hughes herself had no experience in a campaign, Allbaugh none in Texas. And the man on whom George W. would most frequently rely for clarifying issue sticking points--and for delving into his past so as to anticipate questions about his bachelor days and his service in the National Guard--would be a 23-year-old University of Texas graduate named Dan Bartlett who happened to be the only one in the office when the candidate would call at seven in the morning, asking, "It says general crime's gone up in Brazos County by thirty-six percent, but how do we know that?"

This first Bush Machine was more akin to a children's crusade, and Richards had ample opportunity to squash it. But the governor preferred her exquisite put-downs to an engaged campaign. For months she paid her opponent no heed while he laid out the four defining issues. (But only those four; George W. had no life experience in matters such as health care, and it did not occur to the Richards camp to expose his ignorance early on.) For the same period, she spent little from her huge, Hollywood-endowed war chest when she could have forced the Bush camp to drain its lesser coffers. And Richards assumed that areas of Texas in which Republicans from time immemorial had been gaily tarred and feathered did not require her attention. She had forgotten one of her favorite aphorisms, that 80 percent of life is just showing up. That formula seldom holds true in politics, but it did in Texas in 1994: George W. showed up, Richards did not, and that made 80 percent of the difference.

sigh What might have been, what might have been. I'm not disputing the assertion that Texas would have gone Republican with or without Karl Rove and George W. Bush. I just don't think it necessarily had to go as Republican as it did. Remember, the Democrats came within a whisker of electing John Sharp over Rick Perry as Lite Guv, and Paul Hobby over Carol Keeton Rylander as Comptroller, in 1998. Had it not been for Bush's huge coattails, aided by his close relationship with the likes of Pete Laney and Bob Bullock, who knows how thing might have turned out with, say, the 2001 redistricting effort. I have a hard time imagining things being that much worse for the Democrats in just about any possible alternate universe you can reasonably conjure.

Anyway, there's plenty there, but get it while you can. Slate has some more excerpts if this wasn't enough for you.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on September 06, 2007 to The making of the President