What It Took

(6 of 11)

Taming the Mercenaries
By July, all the wiring inside Goreland had become tangled. The White House believed the Gore campaign was run by amateurs. The New Democrats felt the campaign was drifting to the left. The Gore family had its doubts about all the consultants; Gore was on his third pollster, and the campaign had changed management three times. All the exiles seemed to be leaking their side of the story to reporters. The whole thing was driving Daley, Gore's new campaign chairman, crazy.

Every day a new story appeared about the various names on Gore's short list of vice-presidential candidates. Many in the campaign suspected Shrum and Devine of waging a campaign for another client of theirs, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. A campaign official says they had even made a deal with one of the networks to provide "B roll" (pretty footage of their man) if Edwards were selected. Many staff members saved their sharpest blades for Shrum, who never moved to Nashville, who had little history with the candidate and who seemed to be always keeping an eye out for himself.

Daley tried to bridge the gap and put his foot down about all the leaks. He also invited back the old Gore hands that Coelho had banished--such as Ron Klain and Monica Dixon--and sent them to Nashville. He put another old Gore hand, Greg Simon, on the plane as the designated grownup. But Daley's rule was this: You have to give up your day jobs, all your other entanglements, for the duration. Simon came on unpaid--and brought his own cell phone to save even that expense.

Go Tell It on the Mountain
There was never any question what kind of speech bush was going to give at the Republican Convention in Philadelphia: the Democratic kind. He had ridden into town after a bus trip modeled on the one Clinton made in 1992. He seemed to use the "rainbow coalition" as his model for the stage show; for the first time in a decade, the G.O.P. message was tolerance. The whole thing felt like a carefully buttoned-down love-in.

The only question--and it worried the folks in Austin--was this: Would the Republican delegates clap for it?

That's because G.O.P. delegates were dedicated carnivores who loved the red meat of their party's most militant wing and swooned at language against affirmative action and abortion and for cutting taxes and spending. They loved the name Reagan and had always been suspicious of the name Bush. And now along came his son, and no one knew how it would all go over.

But by the time Bush arrived, he had been giving his speech, or a version close to it, for weeks. Mike Gerson, his speechwriter, had been pounding out draft after draft, delivering the first one almost two months ahead of time. Bush kept tweaking it and changing it. He turned one paragraph over to spokeswoman Hughes, a former Texas TV personality, telling her to improve it: "This is your moment. This is your moment." She would fiddle with it and pass it back, and he would do the same and return it, telling her to keep working: "This is your moment." After a while, Hughes got fed up and said, "It's getting to be a pretty long moment, Governor."

By the end, the speech was a soup, as everyone from policy chief John Bolten to media guru McKinnon had tossed in carrots and onions and seasonings. While working out at the pool, Rove came up with some one-liners--"If my opponent had been there at the moon launch, it would have been a 'risky rocket scheme.'" But it was Bush who wrote the ending portraying himself as the kind of optimist who lives on the sunrise side of the mountain.

Just a few hours before he was to speak, Bush was alone in his hotel suite. His family, friends and most of his aides and advisers had gone ahead to the convention hall. But McKinnon hadn't left the hotel and went to see the Governor. McKinnon found Bush in a surprisingly serene state of mind. He could tell from the Governor's demeanor that he wasn't in the mood for chatting. So McKinnon just kept Bush company as he ate a little dinner and then got dressed. "The Governor has this capacity to get into the zone when he has to," McKinnon says. Bush struggled with his cuff links but otherwise did not appear nervous.

After leaving the suite, Bush and McKinnon got into the sedan that would take them to the convention hall. McKinnon could tell Bush still didn't want to talk. So they just sat there quietly, and Bush occasionally glanced at a copy of his speech. As they whizzed down the highway, McKinnon realized the Governor had started humming. At first McKinnon couldn't make out the song. Then he recognized it. It was Go Tell It on the Mountain.