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Bush veterans love Card because he is an honest broker who will make the trains run on time, but no one mistakes him for a visionary. Card has spent the past six weeks at Bush's side, organizing his days, his briefings and his decision making. "Andy has no ego," said a veteran of the Bush White House.
Card worked last week putting the finishing touches on a team of West Wing veterans from the last time around, junior advisers who have all spent eight years in the private sector, made some money, and are ready to move up a couple of notches. Josh Bolten, who toiled in the Trade Representative's office for Dad, is in line to be the domestic policy chief. Economist Larry Lindsey, who did policy for W.'s father before being named to the Federal Reserve Board, is the favorite to take over the Economic Policy Council. Lindsey is the father of Bush's $1.3 trillion tax-cut plan; Bush must soon decide whether to try to pass it, toss it out or enact it piece by piece.
Bush is sensitive enough about the Restoration label that he is certain to bring in new faces wherever he can. Bush would like to have his three top Texas loyalists close by in the White House: political guru Karl Rove, press attache Karen Hughes and operations chief Joe Allbaugh--if he can get him to come. (Allbaugh, who isn't keen to move to D.C., joked to TIME recently that he was "looking for lottery numbers so I can tell the Governor to 'Go to hell.'") Bush's alter ego, Don Evans, a friend going back 25 years, will probably be Commerce Secretary. And there was talk last week of recruiting Dallas Cowboy great and Annapolis grad Roger Staubach to be Secretary of the Navy.
The problem with a restoration this big is that it's so hard to keep it a secret. And old habits die hard. How else to explain the woman working the switchboard at the Bush-Cheney transition headquarters the other day who picked up the phone and said, "Bush-Quayle." She quickly corrected herself with an embarrassed laugh, but who could really blame her?
With reporting by James Colburn and Matthew Cooper/Washington