www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6407226/site/newsweek
How Bush Did It Exclusive: A team of NEWSWEEK reporters unveils the untold fears, secret battles and private emotions behind a historic election Image: President George W Bush and First Lady Laura Bush Charles Ommanney / Contact for Newsweek The president and First Lady at a New Hampshire rally Newsweek This story is based on reporting by Eleanor Clift, Kevin Peraino, Jonatha n Darman, Peter Goldman, Holly Bailey, Tamara Lipper and Suzanne Smalley . Jenna had never before shown any interest in politics or much desire to get involved in her father's campaigns. But now she, along with her sister, Barbara, volunteered to help their father get re-elected. The pr esident was overjoyed to have the girls on the campaign bus, recalled hi s wife, Laura. His mood lightened, to the relief of his handlers, who ha d been anxiously discussing their candidate's surliness and impatience.
Politics has been a family business, and a family war, since long before the Capulets and Montagues began plotting against each other. Alexandra Kerry, the Democratic nominee's 31-year-old daughter, disliked politics, but she campaigned hard for her father anyway, until one day hecklers c alled her a "baby killer." Weeping in her father's arms, she confessed h er fear that the Republicans would steal the election. Kerry comforted h er, telling her that he would not let that happen (just in case, his cam paign recruited 10,000 lawyers).
Image: John and Teresa Heinz Kerry For all the billions spent and the efforts to make elections a semi-scien ce (Karl Rove, Bush's chief adviser, was always studying "metric milepos ts" in his get-out-the-vote operation), politics is intensely personal. Presidential candidates are in some ways objects, screens upon which we project hopes and dreams, fears and hatreds. But they are also humanthe y are husbands and fathers, they have insecurities and doubts, moments o f loneliness and fatigue. They are motivated to run for office by vision s of a better country but also by old resentments and angers. This was e specially true in the 2004 presidential election.
Listen to the complete On Air show It is not clear when George W Bush and John Kerry first met. Kerry once recalled Bush, none too fondly, to writer Julia Reed of Vogue magazine: "He was two years behind me at Yale, and I knew him, and he's still the same guy." Bush says he has no recollection of meeting Kerry at Yale. Bo th presidential candidates were members of the same college secret socie ty, Skull and Bones, but brothers they were not. The two men had dislike d each other before they knew each other.
Behind the Bush Win NEWSWEEK's Editor Mark Whitaker discusses how the Republicans got the bet ter of John Kerry (Courtesy of CNN) NEWSWEEK Bush did not remember Kerry but he knew the type: sanctimonious suck-ups who looked down on fun-loving fellows like George W Bush. In the world according to Bush, guys like Kerry were not out just to ruin Yale. They wanted to take over the whole country, to impose the smug, know-it-all l iberal ideology on regular, God-fearing, hardworking Americans. Kerry may or may not have met Bu sh at Yale but he had met his kind before. At Kerry's prep school, boys like Bush were known as "regs," regular guys, the cool, sarcastic in-cro wd that made awkward, too-eager-to-please boys like John F Kerry feel l ow and left out. The regs were insular, stuck up, too sure of themselves to reach out to, or even see, the wider world. It is impossible to understand the 2004 presidential campaign without app reciating the nature of the animus between the two men. the candidates were capable of saying gracious things about each other's family. But their differences went beyond party or ideolog y or styles of leadership. Each saw the other as a symbol of the wrong s ide of the great post-1960s divide. Bush eyed Kerry and saw the worst of Blue State Americaa pseudo-intellectual, a Frenchified phony, a dither ing weakling. Rove built a whole campaign around this point of view, cas ting Kerry as a "flip-flopper," "out of the mainstream," clinging to the effete "left bank" of society. Kerry looked down on Bush and saw the wo rst of Red State America, a know-nothing who blustered and swaggered, ev en though his head was stuck in the sand. The two candidates could debat e lofty issues in a time of war, but their mutual disdain showed through .
Join Washington bureau chief, Daniel Klaidman on Wednesday, Nov. Enter your City and State Enter Question Submit Erase entry Thanks to modern technology and the influence of money, Bush and Kerry co uld summon enormous resources to bash each other. The 2004 presidential campaign was the first $1 billion-plus campaign (up from roughly $600 mi llion in 2000). About the only good thing that can be said about the cas cade of money, much of it from special interests, flowing into the campa ign was that it was probably a washa zero-sum game, a case of massive o verkill on both sides. Both Kerry and Bush were able to call on some ver y clever political minds. Indeed, Kerry could not stop calling on themh e used his cell phone so much that his handlers twice took it away. Kerr y's tendency to endlessly revisit decisions muddled his message. Often, he seemed so tangled up in dependent clauses that he lost sight of the l arger issues facing the country.
NEWSWEEK RADIO | 11/07/04 ELECTION 2004: DISSECTING THE VOTE Guest: Debra Rosenberg, NEWSWEEK Washington Correspondent; Roberta Combs, President, Christian Coalition of America;
Listen to the complete On Air show Kerry (like Bush) is a far more complex man than the caricature he helped create. He could be decent, thoughtful, sensitive, especially with his well-loved daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa. He had proved his toughness and resilience in war and politics; And yet at times he seemed like a shallow opportunist with a finger in the air. Politicians, of course, need both vision and practicality t o get anything accomplished, and Kerry, while often cautious, could also be bold. Both to heal the bitter partisan divide and because he would d o anything to win, Kerry offered to make GOP Sen. John McCain a kind of grand national-security czarserving as both secretary of Defense and vi ce president in a Kerry administration.
Chapter Eight: The Endgame In an interview with two NEWSWEEK reporters aboard Air Force One in Augus t, Bush was funny and relaxed, self-confident enough to be self-effacing . He is blessed with a patient and caring wife who can tell him when he has gone too far. Yet the peevishness that he showed in the first presid ential debate was never too far from the surface. Or, more precisely, perhaps, he has banished his self-do ubt to the point where he mistakes his own ego for the national purpose. For more than a year, NEWSWEEK followed the presidential campaigns of bot h men from the inside. Beginning in mid-2003, a team of NEWSWEEK reporte rs detached from the weekly magazine to devote themselves to observing, recording and shaping the narrative that follows. The reporters were gra nted unusual access to the staffs and families of both candidates on the understanding that the information they learned would not be made publi c until this Election Issueafter the votes were cast on Nov.
An underreported story of the campaign was the distracting presence of the candidate's willful wife, Teresa Heinz K erry, who demanded everyone's attention, including her husband's. Kerry was delighted by Teresa, and not just by her fortune; Kerry himself was a loner, willing to be criticized but oddly impervious to criticism. The candidate was almost impossible to "manage," at least until the fall of 2004, when John Sasso arrived on the campaign plane to impose some disc ipline. It was a good thing Sasso came aboard with less than 60 days to go, observed Jim Jordan, Kerry's first campaign manager (fired after nin e months in 2003);
Listen to the complete On Air show President Bush, by contrast to senator Kerry, was a zealot for order. The hard-drinking frat boy had long since found the cleansing joy of discip line. He demanded a tightly wound, top-down, on-time-to-the-minute opera tion. His adviser...
|
http://csua.com/feed/