What It Took

(8 of 11)

Easels and Candygrams
The sun was barely up, but W. was, on the phone with Rove at home in the middle of Black September. "I don't want people to get down," Bush told Rove, which basically meant, Don't let the team read the papers, watch the news or get anywhere near a pollster. "I want them to stay focused and not let current events get to their thinking." Bush hooked up with campaign chairman Don Evans in St. Louis and talked about how important it was to keep spirits up. Bush wanted his old friends to keep confidence high. "We talked about how important it was that I project high spirits around here," Evans recalled.

For Bush, September was the cruelest month. A week after the Democratic Convention, Labor Day, the day everyone is supposed to actually sit up and pay attention to politics, Bush was caught on an open mike calling a New York Times reporter a "major-league asshole." The Governor then admitted that he hadn't explained his tax plan correctly, raising questions about whether he knew what was in it at all. Vanity Fair argued that the candidate was dyslexic, which some of his performances only seemed to confirm. He was running ads suggesting that Gore was scared to debate him, which confirmed the sense that the reverse was true. A front-page New York Times story detailed the subliminal use of rats followed by the phrase BUREAUCRATS DECIDE in a Bush campaign advertisement. "If I had to write a book about this campaign," said Hughes, "it would be called Of Rats, Assholes and Dyslexia."

To sharpen their message, chief strategist Rove formed the McKinnon Commission to come up with a packaged policy that was not new in substance but had a buffed-up look to it, including sepia-toned briefing books. "Blueprint for the Middle Class," for instance, was just a 10-page document done in the style of actual blueprints that outlined how the Bush plan would support the family from cradle to grave. There was nothing subtle about it: on nearly every page was a picture of a woman, each one from a different walk of life, state, demographic subgroup. It looked like an advertising campaign for a new kind of Volvo or cellular phone. Bush's travel was coordinated that week to reach Midwestern swing-state women, just as it was later when "Agenda for the Greatest Generation" wrapped the candidate's senior-friendly message in a briefing book with pictures of V-day celebrations, all delivered to key states like Florida and Pennsylvania that have a high percentage of elderly voters. The commission also wanted Bush to lay out a "First 100 Days" agenda in Pittsburgh, Pa., but that was shot down by the candidate himself. It would look arrogant, he said, as if he had already locked up the election.

Gore, meanwhile, was starting to poke holes in his own ship. In the third week of September, reporters began to challenge him on some of the anecdotes he related in his speeches, including whether the prescription drug Lodine did cost less for his dog than for his mother-in-law. Gore's sudden drift may not have been entirely coincidental. Republican message sculptor Ed Gillespie arrived in Austin to step up the attacks on the Vice President. Constantly outgunned by Gore's better tactical operation, Bush's team started working on what it called "stink bombs," or what later became known as "candygrams"--tactical strikes on Gore's veracity that it hoped would knock their opponent off stride. The bomb throwers were in place, ready to go when the debates began.

The Secret Debate Strategy
Karl Rove's cell phone was ringing, and he could see it was Don Evans calling. "Where are you?" Evans asked, sounding angry. It was nearly 9 p.m. on a Friday, which left exactly four days to go before the first debate, and something had gone wrong. Rove was driving to a nearby Austin church with New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg. Gregg had been playing Gore in debate-practice sessions for months. He and Evans were joining Bush for a run-through designed as a kind of conditioning exercise: they had to get the Governor used to performing at a late hour, given his usual 9:30 bedtime.

"I'm way ahead of you, Don," Rove told Evans with his usual bubbliness. He knew Bush hated being late, and so had hustled everyone out of dinner and into the cars for what was supposed to be a quick ride to the church.