If you have any doubt whether George W. Bush is going to run for president, consider this: On the evening of February 10, a Republican state representative from New Hampshire named Tim McGough called Bush’s office, hoping to talk with him about charter schools. Bush’s secretary politely told McGough the governor would be busy for the next few weeks and that perhaps it would be better if he spoke with the state’s director of higher education.
At 8 A.M. the next day, McGough got a phone call, and it wasn’t from the director of higher education. It was from Bush. McGough missed the call, but when he caught up with the governor a few days later, they talked for 25 minutes, almost entirely about presidential politics. “I’m very serious about this,” said Bush. McGough wanted proof, such as a commitment the governor would come to New Hampshire. Bush said he couldn’t leave Texas until the legislature adjourned at the end of May, but he assured McGough, “There are things I can do with an exploratory committee” in the meantime. So when will you announce the exploratory committee? pestered McGough. “In four weeks or less,” replied Bush. That sounded good to McGough, as did what Bush said next: “Tell anyone you want that we talked, and tell ’em to keep their powder dry.”
This is among the more explicit instances of Bush’s telegraphing his intentions, but it’s hardly the only one. Over the past few months, as the media’s attention has been devoted to the impeachment of President Clinton, Bush and his advisers have quietly laid the groundwork for his presidential campaign. A high-placed Republican operative who spent a few hours with Bush recently told me that “they are clearly way, way down the road of organizing.” And the job hasn’t required heavy lifting. Bush is already the favored candidate of Republican elected officials and party leaders across the country.
Indeed, what’s happening is closer to an attempted coronation than the normal recruiting of supporters. In mid-January, 25 of the 47 Republicans in the California legislature signed a letter to Bush urging him to run for president, saying “America needs an experienced leader who brings conservative values and a winning candidacy that will reach out to all.” Similar letters have recently been sent by the overwhelming majority of Republican state legislators from Iowa, South Carolina, and New Mexico, and there are rumors of 10 more states’ following suit.
The support isn’t limited to state legislators. On February 9, 75 current or former members of Congress met at Washington’s Capitol Hill Club to form a Draft Bush 2000 Committee. This effort, organized by former representative Gerald Solomon of New York, is noteworthy for two reasons: First, Bush’s congressional supporters span the ideological and geographical spectrum, ranging from pro-choice moderates like Marge Roukema of New Jersey and Jennifer Dunn of Washington to pro-life conservatives like David Dreier of California and Peter Hoekstra of Michigan. Second, it’s virtually unprecedented for so many members of Congress to mobilize around a non-incumbent presidential candidate a whole year before the first primary — and before Bush has even announced he’s running.
The individuals associated with Bush’s political team say they’re not engineering this outpouring of support. But they’re hardly discouraging it. Solomon says he’s kept Karl Rove, Bush’s top political adviser, apprised of his efforts every step of the way. Similarly, shortly after the Iowa Republicans sent their letter to Bush, 15 of them were granted a two-hour meeting with the governor in his residence, where he fielded questions on everything from ethanol (he’s for it) to crime (he’s against).
Bush has received numerous other pols in Austin as well. On February 17, he had a crab-cake lunch in his residence with the lieutenant governor of South Carolina and three New Jersey Republican legislators. One of them, Diane Allen, GOP whip of the state Senate, told me she went to the meeting undecided, wanting to hear Bush answer questions about education and about GOP strategies for winning over moderate, pro-choice Republican women. She came away deeply impressed — “legislating issues of the heart is not what he’s about,” she says — and is ready to throw her support behind him once he announces.
Bush isn’t just meeting with lawmakers, though. He’s also schmoozing with an array of people who could help his presidential bid. In January, he traveled to the Virginia headquarters of the Christian Coalition, where he spent a friendly couple of hours with Pat Robertson. He’s also had recent visits in Austin from Silicon Valley tycoons like Jim Barksdale of Netscape and T. J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor, as well as Craig Benson, a prominent New Hampshire cable executive.
Rove and Al Hubbard, a Bush buddy and former aide to Dan Quayle, have been coordinating outreach to policy wonks, and among those who have visited are Steve Moore of the Cato Institute, James Q. Wilson of UCLA, and Fred Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. So great is the interest in Bush, he’s even started receiving foreign dignitaries. During a recent one-week period, Brian Mulroney, the former Canadian prime minister, dropped by, as did William Hague, Britain’s Tory leader, and the foreign minister of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr Al-Thani.
Those meeting with the governor have come away impressed with his questions and his seemingly genuine interest in their answers. Meanwhile, he’s getting most of his nuts-and-bolts policy advice from a kitchen cabinet that has been conferring with him regularly since his reelection last November. The domestic policy group is headed by Steve Goldsmith, the mayor of Indianapolis whose reformist policies made him a hero to free-market types across the country. The economic policy group is led by Larry Lindsey, a former Federal Reserve governor and Harvard professor whose writings include a book defending the Reagan tax cuts (Stanford University economists Michael Boskin, John Cogan, and John Taylor are also part of the team). And the foreign policy/defense group includes some of the shining lights of the Reagan and Bush administrations: George Shultz, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, and Condoleezza Rice. The campaign’s day-to-day issues director will be Josh Bolton, who has worked in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and as an international trade lawyer in the Bush administration.
On the money side, Bush has few worries. There’s a long-established Bush fund-raising network, and during last year’s campaign the governor showed he has appeal beyond Texas by raising $ 4.6 million out of state, almost 25 percent of his total. Bush is expected to be in such good financial shape there have been whispers from his camp he’ll pass up federal matching funds in order to avoid the spending limits that accompany these funds.
Most likely to be tapped as finance chairman is Don Evans, a longtime Bush friend from Midland, Texas. Also expected to hold senior fund-raising posts in a Bush presidential campaign are veteran Republican fund-raisers Mel Sembler of Florida, Wayne Berman of Washington, and Heinz Prechter of Michigan. They’ll be assisted by Pat Ryan, who heads Aon, a Chicago insurance company, and Richard Hugg, who raised big money for the gubernatorial campaign of Maryland Republican Ellen Sauerbrey. Bush also has a high-octane contingent of fund-raisers from California: Howard Leach of San Francisco, Alex Spanos and Gerald Parsky of San Diego, Brad Freeman of Los Angeles, and Tim Draper of Silicon Valley. Some of the GOP’s leading big-money moderates — Henry Kravis, Lew Eisenberg, John Moran — are scheduled to meet with Bush on February 24 in Austin and may throw their support behind him.
If money isn’t a worry for Bush, manpower could be. As much as he’s done to organize his campaign, many of the top GOP operatives in key states like Iowa and New Hampshire have already been snapped up by other candidates. Bush was so eager to win the services of Steve Grubbs, Iowa’s outgoing party chairman, he called to congratulate him in December on his new baby. But a month later, Grubbs signed on with Steve Forbes. Thus in Iowa, Bush will have to rely on Thurman Gaskill, a state senator who is a longtime friend of President Bush, and Tom Tauke, a former congressman who’s helping to coordinate Bush’s Washington-based activities. Gaskill and Tauke aren’t exactly kingmakers in Iowa, though in the end it may not matter much. Grubbs concedes that even though Bush hasn’t announced, “he’s still the favorite in Iowa right now.”
As for New Hampshire, Bush’s experience with McGough underscores how demanding the state’s Republicans are of their presidential candidates. The good news is that there are so many heavyweights in the state’s Republican network that Bush still has time to win some of them over. He’s close to senator Judd Gregg and former governor Steve Merrill, but both are also close to Bob and Elizabeth Dole and remain uncommitted. Bush will not have the support of another former governor, John Sununu, who’s with Quayle and who still blames Bush Jr. for his ouster as White House chief of staff. A bigger prize, though, is the expected endorsement of Richard Flynn, a Bush loyalist who’s widely recognized as one of the state’s most influential Republican organizers.
The only GOP leaders Bush and his operatives seem not to have courted are many of the people who worked for Bush pere. There’s still enormous resentment over the management of the 1992 campaign, and George W. has made clear in private that, whenever possible, he wants to avoid having to depend on the aides who he believes lost his father the presidency.
With so much of the campaign apparatus already in place, the question is not whether Bush will announce, but when he’ll do it. His recent decision to send big-money donors a video touting his record as governor has heightened speculation that an exploratory committee will be announced soon. As for the actual candidacy, that’s expected in June, once the legislature adjourns.
People who have met with Bush report that he’s remarkably poised, considering the dual pressures of a legislative session and an impending presidential campaign. Sounds like good practice for someone who wants to be president.
Matthew Rees is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
