Lone Star Rising

The talk, at first, was all about policy--Texas Governor George W. Bush holding forth in front of 10 Florida moneymen. But the visitors at this mid-January luncheon in the Governor's mansion in Austin hadn't come to discuss ways to improve education or reduce teen pregnancy. They were there to support a Bush campaign for President, and some were worried about his resolve. Recent news reports suggested the Governor might be having second thoughts about putting his wife Laura and their twin 17-year-old daughters through the media onslaught of a campaign. "We're ready to work for you," said one of the donors, "but we're hearing your wife and daughters don't want you to run."

Bush smiled and leaned forward. "Let me tell y'all something," he drawled. "I love my wife. And I love my daughters. I would lie down and die for 'em. But they don't have a veto on this." Then he became even more blunt, handicapping his opponents for the Republican nomination, counting the ways in which he was stronger. Dan Quayle, he predicted, won't be able to raise enough money to compete. Neither would Elizabeth Dole, whose candidacy Bush called a relief because she drew some of the heat away from him. Steve Forbes and his bottomless checkbook worry Bush the most, but in the end, he concluded, Forbes isn't electable. At lunches like this one, staff members hand departing visitors a long, favorable article on Al Gore. The message: Republicans have to pick a winner, someone with enough general-election appeal to beat the Vice President in 2000. Says a participant: "He wanted to leave the clear impression that he's running and he can win."

No one who has made the pilgrimage to Austin has any doubt: George W. Bush is running for President. And last week he began sharing the news with the public. After months of coy political theater--feigned reticence meant to stoke interest, with allies circulating wholly unnecessary draft-Bush petitions--he finally stood still long enough to announce the formation of a presidential exploratory committee. The 10-member committee was put together with symbolism in mind. By making former Secretary of State George Shultz a committee member, Bush, 52, showed fealty not to his father's Administration but to Ronald Reagan's--a message aimed squarely at conservatives who never felt comfortable with President Bush. The other message is one of inclusion: for a party that is often criticized as too Southern, too male and too white, Bush's committee of men, women and minorities boasts almost Clintonian diversity.

The announcement lifted the lid from a pre-campaign that has been simmering for nearly a year, during which time Bush and his small Texas operation have assembled a cadre of top-flight policy advisers, locked in major donors from around the country and stirred up so much giddy anticipation among G.O.P. activists that there is already wild talk about Bush's invincibility. Scores of fund raisers, party wise men and elected officials have made the trek to Austin in recent months, and most seem to have come away with the same feeling as Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating. "I have met the victor," Keating says of Bush. "And it is he."

After getting skunked in the past two presidential elections and taking a pasting in the 1998 midterms, Republicans are desperate for a winner. And Bush is nothing if not that: he upset incumbent Ann Richards in 1994 to become Governor of what is now the second largest state, won re-election last fall with 69% of the vote, and currently boasts job-approval ratings among Texans that top 80%. His success at co-opting traditional Democratic issues such as education--and boosting from 37% to 65% the number of black and Hispanic students passing key statewide tests--has helped lure women and minorities to his camp. And, in a party often at war with itself, his charm has kept social conservatives from deserting him without alienating moderates--and vice versa. No wonder Bush has victory-starved Republicans salivating. "This is being driven by a pervasive terror in the ranks of Republicans," concedes one of his outside advisers. "If we lose the White House in 2000, we'll lose another third of the federal judiciary and two more Supreme Court Justices. And we'll lose the House. We're staring into the abyss, and a lot of Republicans feel Bush is the only one who can save us."

So the race is on to sign up with the savior. Thirteen of the nation's 31 G.O.P. Governors have already hitched their wagon to Bush's lone star, and several more are about to. Republican state legislators across the country are rushing to write draft-Bush letters before he makes it official. Ninety percent of Republicans in the South Carolina house have signed on, and 75% of the G.O.P. in Iowa's house and senate. The numbers are similar in California and New Mexico. And those who hand-deliver the letters to Bush leave even more love sick than when they came, quoting passages from his second inaugural address and describing in near mythic terms his intellect, candor and vision. "There is a twinkle in his eye," gushes Iowa state representative Chuck Larson, who led the draft movement in his early-caucus state. "He's a giant walking onto this playing field."