HIS DOMAIN President Bush in the Oval Office in early December
(8 of 10)
The Bush camp was hearing all this and debating the price of admission. "It was one that we constantly talked about," says a senior White House adviser. "During Abu Ghraib, people were calling for people's heads," says another, "and the President was unwilling to just fire somebody because it would satisfy people." Besides, Bush thought people were basically looking for him to call the whole Iraq invasion a mistake, which he was not about to do. Privately, he did acknowledge there had been blunders, but that didn't mean it made sense to say so publicly. At the second presidential debate, a town-hall meeting of undecided voters, a woman called Linda Grabel asked Bush to name three mistakes he had made while in office. A part of Bush wanted to answer; his father had landed in trouble during a town-hall debate when he fumbled a young woman's question about how the national debt personally affected him. But when you are running a character campaign, Bush felt, you don't wring your hands. So he dodged the question, and Kerry walloped him for doing so.
Then a funny thing happened on the way to the motorcade. Once the cameras were off, Bush went into the audience and tracked Grabel down. "I appreciate your question," he told her, according to an aide. "And I hope you appreciate my answer, because with the political climate we live in, I know it was not your intent to play gotcha with the President of the United States. But this is where it ends up. Let me just assure you, I know that I haven't done everything right."
Keep Your Focus
Bush's famous loyalty, both to people and policies without apparent regard for performance, lay at the heart of the demands for contrition. His critics deplored the stubbornness that often prevents him from stretching beyond the limits of his experience. When it comes to setting policy, they argued, the risks of shutting out dissent and refusing to adjust course have become increasingly clear. But when it comes to running for office, his aides felt, there was a great advantage in having a candidate who set a strategy and then stuck to it as well as to his team.
Most campaigns are known for carnage and chaos. Bob Dole left staff members on the tarmac when he fired them. Clinton had an official campaign team and then the whole secret shadow operation of Dick Morris. Kerry's campaign had more layers than a baklava, and as an aide complained, "he never gave the same speech twice." In Bushland, aides didn't have to be worried that someone would go around or undermine them or that they would be thrown under the bus at the first sign of trouble. "I've been more worried about job security in city-council races than the presidential," says McKinnon. "That gave us the ability to focus and do our job. I would get calls from the chief of staff in the middle of the campaign saying, 'Got everything you need?' That's unheard of--not to bitch or fire me but to see if I needed anything."