The Campaign in the Wings
BARNES, FRED
The Campaign in the Wings The Bush forces bide their time. BY FRED BARNES Des Moines Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie spent last weekend in Iowa as the lone prominent defender...
...The answer was obvious: personal contact...
...And of course there's the president...
...It has amassed 6 million names of Bush supporters on its website, 10 times the number Howard Dean brags about collecting...
...The only way for the Democrats to get attention then was to talk louder, louder, and louder...
...leaders of the seven other leading industrial democracies...
...Bush won't rely solely on TV ads as Reagan and Clinton did in their successful reelection campaigns...
...For months now, Gillespie has been the only top Bush operative regularly combating Democrats in public...
...This was not unusual...
...There's a sneak preview of the Bush campaign in Iowa on caucus day and in New Hampshire for the January 27 primary...
...If the Bush organizational drive—the ground game—is as aggressive as advertised and the issues are on Bush's side, he's likely to exceed 52 percent...
...Meanwhile, the Bush campaign has concentrated on organizing at the state and local level for the fall...
...But there was no national effort except for Gillespie's activity, permitting Bush to appear above the fray...
...preconvention periods...
...This above-it-all stance will end with a bang when the Bush campaign begins...
...Bush was a bit deceptive in 2003...
...David Yepsen, political writer for the Des Moines Register, thinks it's a mistake for Bush not to come...
...The RNC spent $1.5 million to figure out the best way to improve the voter drive...
...The only way for the Democrats to get attention then was to talk louder, louder, and louder," the adviser says, and the contrast favored Bush...
...If Bush were faltering politically, he might crank up a full-blown campaign...
...Bush's job approval (60 percent in the Gallup poll) points to reelection...
...It may need to be...
...The idea is for Republican bigwigs (Bill Frist, Tom DeLay, George Pataki, and friends) to show the Bush flag and step on the Democratic story...
...No doubt the lowballing by Bush's operatives is a reaction to 2000, when they insisted throughout the campaign that Bush held a lead over Al Gore...
...The Bush campaign is similar to Clinton's in one regard...
...I suspect Bush's political team is also slightly disingenuous in forecasting the president will win by no more than 52-48 percent, hardly a landslide...
...It's without precedent in the modern age of campaigns...
...Bush is delaying the start of his reelection drive until a winner emerges in the Democratic race...
...Campaign officials are obsessed with averting the dip Bush experienced in the final week of the 2000 campaign...
...This is the most extensive grassroots campaign I've ever seen in the Republican party...
...But for the moment, that's not the Bush style...
...Democrats expect a robust Bush effort, but they may be shocked by the sheer firepower of the Bush onslaught...
...Even in California, a predominantly Democratic state, his approval has jumped to 52 percent in the Field poll...
...For the caucuses in 1984, Reagan himself went to Iowa, and Clinton did the same in 1996...
...Clinton aired a massive wave of TV ads outside major media markets in 1995...
...They were barely noticed by the media, letting Clinton appear as president but not as a candidate...
...Another Bush adviser theorizes that the California gubernatorial recall grabbed the political spotlight from the Democratic presidential race last year, aiding Bush...
...Bush himself has attended fundraisers, but hasn't made overtly political appearances...
...But the way the Democratic contest is unfolding helps Bush...
...BY FRED BARNES Des Moines Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie spent last weekend in Iowa as the lone prominent defender of President Bush...
...So will his official appearances, such as the G-8 meeting in June at Sea Island, Georgia, with A Bush adviser theorizes that the California gubernatorial recall grabbed the political spotlight from the Democratic presidential race...
...That's later than Ronald Reagan, the first President Bush, or Bill Clinton kicked off his reelection...
...His campaign appearances are bound to attract enormous media attention...
...There's no utility to it, no advantage on a cost-benefit basis...
...It diminishes the Democratic candidates and makes them look like midgets," the adviser says...
...There's no need" for Bush to enter the race formally, a Bush adviser insists...
...It worked well and is being expanded for 2004...
...This was emphasized in the 2002 midterm election with a "72-hour plan" for contacting voters in the three days before the election...
...And the public now feels the country is headed in the right direction (55 percent in Gallup) after months of thinking otherwise...
...The RNC is aiming to register 3 million new Republican voters...
...We're light years ahead of where we were in 2000," says Ralph Reed, Bush's Southeast coordinator...
...Arrayed against him were the Democratic presidential candidates and their allies, who scorched Bush (and each other) on the eve of the state's caucuses...
...That means February at the earliest, probably March, but possibly not until early April...
...Nor have Bush aides organized squads of well-known surrogates to tout the president's reelection around the country...
...Also, big-name surrogates and "truth squads" will suddenly appear everywhere, blitzing Bush's Democratic opponent...
...He gets to be president as long as possible and not president and candidate...
...But why jump in sooner...
...His campaign did put forward surrogates to defend the president in the local media...
...And the Bush camp has been largely silent in the face of gang attacks by Democratic candidates at televised debates...
...The effort is premised on the notion that Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 because Democrats did a better job of getting their voters to the polls...
...At the same time, they argue that Bush has the advantage in each of the three most important issue clusters—the economy, national security, and the culture...
...Reed can tick off the states where Bush lost five or more percentage points—Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Iowa, and so on...
...The president already has $99 million in the bank to spend between now and the Republican convention on Labor Day weekend, and he'll raise millions more...
...Most will go to finance TV spots at a saturation level normal for the fall general election season, but unprecedented in the primary and Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...The Bush campaign has already trained 5,500 local leaders and expects to mobilize 10,000...
...His reelection campaign has yet to broadcast a single TV ad, though the Republican National Committee aired a pro-Bush spot briefly in two states...
...He intends to spend it all...
Vol. 9 • January 2004 • No. 19
