"Just remember," George W. Bush told aides in his Detroit hotel room last Thursday morning, as he read his political obituaries in the papers, "this is when you find out who your friends are." The polls were so tight it was getting harder to breathe; Republican wise men in Washington were calling for a human sacrifice. But this is the same team that saw Bush through his two races for Governor and helped him dig out from the New Hampshire avalanche. It would be unthinkable for him to abandon them now. In fact, Bush is making his own target list, of all those supposed allies who have publicly worried or whined every time anything went wrong. As always, George W. keeps score. "When we win," an adviser says, "all those people are going to be at the back of the line" for jobs and other favors that a new Administration can bestow.
But any talk of retribution doesn't mean that the Republican message of alarm wasn't getting through to the Bush plane. Before the day was over, it was Bush who was having to reinvent himself, after nearly four straight weeks of playing sloppy defense. He abandoned his debate filibuster, snagged a new slogan--REAL PLANS FOR REAL PEOPLE--his fourth of the campaign, and announced that he would return to town-meeting events much as he had after John McCain whupped him in New Hampshire. Why? "Well, it's a better picture," he said.
The Bush operatives could be forgiven for ignoring their own warnings that this was destined to be a close race. All through the giddy spring and summer of the Bush ascendancy, they swapped poll results like Pokemon cards. On the walls of the brown campaign cubicles at Austin headquarters were huge national maps with a wide Bush blanket of blue covering the states in which he was up. A few specks of yellow marked the toss-ups, and the Gore strongholds in red were so small they looked like squashed bugs. The heady numbers were such a point of pride for the Bush team that they boasted about them on their website. "Gore has never led in a likely voter poll," it crowed. The last update, however, was mid-August. Since then, it's been hurricane season.
Last week most polls showed a dead heat, including TIME/CNN, which had Gore ahead 47% to 46%. Bush's double-digit lead of a month ago had deserted him, thanks largely to female voters carpooling home to the Democrats. Even Bush couldn't defy the rules of courtship forever: in times of peace and prosperity, it takes more than a sunny disposition to persuade voters to dump their dates. Bush's flawless postprimary campaign obscured the fact that by any historical measure, he never should have been that far ahead in the first place. While Gore did help himself with a buoyant convention and a focused message, he is also helped as people begin to pay more attention and discover the Veep is not quite the stiff they thought he was. He not only has an edge on the issues Americans say they care most about, from education and the environment to Social Security and Medicare, as of last week he had even caught up in the popularity contest, edging past Bush in the race to be more "likable," according to TIME/CNN's poll.