The Selling of George Bush

JAMES LEYNSE--SABA FOR TIME
THE ADMAN
Jim Ferguson
Head rider in the "Park Avenue Posse," the bombastic Texan and his ad team have a mission: sell Bush

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BROOKS KRAFT--CORBIS SYGMA FOR TIME

THE DIRECTOR
Mark McKinnon
So sick of politics he once quit, the former Democrat says Bush restored his faith

Rounding out the message team are Hughes and Rove. At campaign headquarters in Austin, an industrious policy shop churns out ideas that fit into the compassionate conservative rubric. Rove then picks the optimal political moment to unveil them. In a process Rove describes as "political heuristics," most people don't retain the details of Bush's proposals, but they come away with a positive feeling about Bush that makes them more inclined to vote for him. "They get a sense of his values, of what kind of a person he is," says Rove.

If Bush's personality is political gold, it was mined in Midland. No conversation with Bush or those who know him lasts very long without loping back to the dusty oil town on the flat plains of West Texas where Bush grew up and then returned to try his hand at business. In the narrative of Bush's life, Midland is seen as a kind of egalitarian utopia. His wife Laura is from Midland, and Bush says he will be buried there. When asked the difference between him and his famously preppy father, the candidate often simply says "Midland," as if no more explanation were needed. "In Midland each individual matters," Bush told TIME. "It's a long way away from the structured world of the East Coast, where there is a sense of class distinction."

Midland even informs Bush's policy preferences. Not long ago, on a campaign swing to Oregon, he tried to explain to a group of factory workers why he believes a portion of their Social Security should be invested in private accounts. "Maybe it's because I was raised in West Texas, far away from the center of power," Bush said, "and I trust individuals." McKinnon and a film crew flew to Midland last month to shoot footage for the convention film, and references to Bush's homestead are sure to find their way into the convention speech.

This West Texas city built on oil is the starting point for the Bush backstory; the second chapter of his autobiography, written mostly by Hughes, is titled "Midland Values." For those who market Bush, highlighting his Midland roots is a way to counter a competing impression of the man as a callow, underachieving product of a wealthy, East Coast elite. For a candidate short on biography, Midland solves a problem. There's no wartime heroism in Bush's past or a hardscrabble beginning. This is someone who concedes he was something of a mess until he was 40. For Bush's imagemakers, Midland provides terra firma, a place to anchor Bush in the popular imagination.

In an election in which authenticity is a must, Bush's attachment to Midland has the added value of being true. He spent his formative years there, before the family moved to Houston when he was 12, playing baseball, throwing rocks and riding his bicycle to the Roy Rogers movies downtown. But more telling is that after completing the trifecta of a privileged East Coast education--Andover, Yale and Harvard--Bush returned in 1975. "He decided these were just his kind of people," says boyhood chum Charlie Younger. Bush wore loafers without socks, but in the time he lived there, first as a young bachelor and then with Laura, he fit right in with a place known for casting a cold eye on uppity outsiders. "In Midland if you take yourself too seriously, someone will shut you down real fast," says Robert McCleskey, one of Bush's many friends who hail from and still live in that small city.

But if Bush's Midland bona fides are real, the campaign's mythologizing of the place is outsized. "It's a place where the sky is as big as your dreams," gushes an aide. The reality of Bush's Midland is not as ideal as advertised. "The rewards are pretty disproportionately given out," says Bush's boyhood next-door neighbor Randall Roden. "There was some diversity with Indians and Mexicans, but you didn't find them owning oil companies or running them." In the 1950s the Midland Bush knew was prosperous and virtually all white, a town legally segregated just like others in the South. Even now, if you scratch Midland's surface, it's easy to find pockets of good old-fashioned racism, even among old Bush family friends, some of whom on a recent trip were loose with their language. And while Bush never embraced those Midland values, neither was he well known for challenging the way things were.

The G.O.P. Convention will be the Bush team's chance to put the best version of their candidate and his past on display. Count on a film with romantic images of Midland. And count on the rest of the staging to be as laser-focused on making Bush seem noble, sincere and decent. For the convention in Philadelphia, the Bush team has chosen as its theme the careful "Renewing America's Purpose. Together." The real leitmotif--pushed by the campaign for many weeks--is much edgier: "George Bush Is a Different Kind of Republican." Mimicking almost exactly the language Bill Clinton used to stiff-arm his party's liberals eight years ago, it is an implicit sniff at the old kind of Republicans who will be gathered that week in Philadelphia.