HIS DOMAIN President Bush in the Oval Office in early December
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Bush admits to savoring a good fight. "I think the natural instinct for most people in the political world is they want people to like them," he says. "On the other hand, I think sometimes I take kind of a delight in who the critics are." He talks about how he relishes the moment when the political world is at his feet as he stands before Congress to deliver the State of the Union. "Sometimes I look through that teleprompter and see reactions," he recalls. "I'm not going to characterize what the reactions are, but nevertheless it causes me to want to lean a little more forward into the prompter, if you know what I mean. Maybe it's the mother in me." As he says that, he practically leans out of his chair, as though his antagonists were there in the room.
So the President didn't mind taking on his campaign opponent earlier and more frequently than sitting Presidents are supposed to. When Bush first referred to Kerry in a campaign speech in early March, he was criticized for trading away the power and prestige of the office and elevating Kerry in the process. "His office is the coin of the realm," a Washington political veteran said at the time, "and he's squandering it." Instead of sitting back and enjoying the Rose Garden, though, Bush felt he had to define Kerry before the Massachusetts Senator could define himself. "He discovered in 2000 that campaigns are choices and not referendums," says Bush's media adviser, Mark McKinnon. "You have to frame the choice, or your opponent will frame it for you. So unlike 2000, in 2004 he came up to the plate with a big bat."
The piece of advice Bush ignored most diligently was the call for him to admit mistakes. It was not just the New York Times demanding that he apologize for alleging there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, or Michael Moore saying he should apologize to dead soldiers' families for sending their kids into a war over oil. It was also a chorus of Republican wise men, like one who e-mailed a top White House official after a presidential press conference. "I wish he had found a way to admit a mistake. The press corps is not going to let the issue go away," the e-mailer wrote. He even offered Bush a script: "One mistake was my initial opposition to [establishing the Department of] Homeland Security. Another mistake was initial opposition to the 9/11 commission, and another mistake was my failure to address the problems between the FBI and the CIA." As Kerry became more aggressive in his criticism of Bush's Iraq policy, other Republicans said the President had to beat back the challenger's charge that Bush was out of touch. "We had to admit that we'd gotten some things wrong," said a senior Republican, "or we were beginning to look like we were living on another planet."