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For 2004, Bush's Aides Plan Late Sprint for Re-election

 April 22, 2003

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

New York Times

WASHINGTON, April 21 - President Bush's advisers have

drafted a re-election strategy built around staging the

latest nominating convention in the party's history,

allowing Mr. Bush to begin his formal campaign near the

third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and to enhance

his fund-raising advantage, Republicans close to the White

House say.

In addition, Mr. Bush's advisers say they are prepared to

spend as much as $200 million - twice the amount of his

first campaign - to finance television advertising and

other campaign expenses through the primary season that

leads up to the Republican convention in September 2004.

That would be a record amount by a presidential candidate,

and would be especially notable because Mr. Bush faces no

serious opposition for his party's nomination.

The president is planning a sprint of a campaign that would

start, at least officially, with his acceptance speech at

the Republican convention, a speech now set for Sept. 2.

The convention, to be held in New York City, will be the

latest since the Republican Party was founded in 1856, and

Mr. Bush's advisers said they chose the date so the event

would flow into the commemorations of the third anniversary

of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

The back-to-back events would complete the framework for a

general election campaign that is being built around

national security and Mr. Bush's role in combatting

terrorism, Republicans said. Not incidentally, they said

they hoped it would deprive the Democratic nominee of

critical news coverage during the opening weeks of the

general election campaign.

The strategy, described by Republicans close to the White

House, is intended to highlight what Mr. Bush's advisers

want to be the main issue of his campaign, national

security, while intensifying his already formidable

fund-raising advantage in the general election campaign.

By scheduling the start of the convention for Aug. 30, a

month after Democrats choose their candidate, the White

House has put off the imposition of spending ceilings that

take effect when the parties officially nominate their

candidates.

Under campaign spending laws, candidates who accept public

financing will have about $75 million to spend between the

nominating conventions and Election Day. Because the

Democrats scheduled their convention for late July, the

party's candidate will have to stretch out the same

allocation over a longer period. The nominees of both

parties are expected to accept public financing.

Even though Mr. Bush will not begin his formal campaign

until after the convention, his political team is preparing

to begin broadcasting television advertisements as early as

next spring. By that point, the White House expects the

Democratic candidate to be settled, but battered and sapped

of money from the primaries, and thus unable to counter a

Republican advertising assault.

The strategy of starting so late and building the campaign

around the events in New York is not without risks. Mr.

Bush's advisers said they were wary of being portrayed as

exploiting the trauma of Sept. 11, a perception that might

be particularly difficult to rebut as Mr. Bush shuttles

between political events at Madison Square Garden and

memorial services at ground zero.

In addition, Mr. Bush's advisers said they remained worried

by the economy's persistent weakness, an issue that could

trump national security if the threat from terrorism

appeared to recede.

But they said the Democratic Party was making a mistake in

building its hopes for 2004 on the fate of Mr. Bush's

father in 1992. The current president, White House

officials said, has already dispatched with his father's

biggest problem, the perception that he was out of touch

with the nation's economic woes, by pushing his economic

program nearly every time he appears in public.

"This isn't 1991," an adviser to Mr. Bush said. "People

clearly see this as a chapter in a struggle against a new

kind of threat. Al Qaeda is still out there. The security

and national security issue is going to remain very, very

strong."

White House officials have portrayed Mr. Bush as a

president with little involvement to date in planning his

re-election campaign. The matter is so sensitive that

Republicans who have been consulted by the White House

officials said they had been warned not to divulge

discussions about the campaign. The concern is that such

conversations might run counter to the portrayal by

Republicans of a White House paying little mind to

politics.

Behind the scenes, Mr. Bush's advisers have been assembling

the framework for the 2004 campaign. They have set

fund-raising targets, made personnel decisions and made

calculations of the contest's ideological and geographic

contours to try to turn Mr. Bush's incumbency to his

advantage at every opportunity.

White House officials, led by Mr. Bush's chief political

adviser, Karl Rove, are in the midst of an extensive

examination of the history of previous re-election

campaigns. Since the start of the year, they have conducted

in-depth interviews with Republicans who have run recent

presidential campaigns, reflecting Mr. Rove's fascination

with political history and the determination of the White

House not to repeat what they see as the mistakes of past

Republican candidates, especially Mr. Bush's father in

1992.

Some advisers said they were hopeful that the 2004 contest

would mirror the 1984 re-election of Ronald Reagan, who

loped to an overwhelming victory over Walter F. Mondale.

Other Bush advisers said the apter model appeared to be

Franklin D. Roosevelt's election to a third term over

Wendell L. Willkie in 1940, at a time when the nation was

unsettled by the spreading global war and the pressure on

the United States to enter the conflict.

For the next 18 months, Mr. Bush's explicitly political

appearances will be limited almost exclusively to

fund-raisers and tending-the-vineyard visits to important

political states like New Hampshire.

Republicans close to White House described the strategy as

being in the formative stages, saying much would depend on

what happened in the world and to the American economy over

the next year, as well as on whom the Democrats nominate.

White House officials, as well as Democrats, said they

expected the Democratic opponent to become clear by the

first or second week of March 2004.

Although the White House has put out the word that Mr. Bush

was prepared to raise $200 million for the pre-convention

period, several Republicans said the figure was not based

on a determined need, but by a desire to rally their

fund-raising network to work hard and to rattle Democrats

by reminding them of the fund-raising dominance of the

president.

"We have the capability to raise it," an adviser to Mr.

Bush said. "Whether we do so will depend on the need."'

In presenting Mr. Bush as being unengaged with the demands

of his re-election campaign, Republicans close to the White

House have been trying to draw a contrast with the

Democrats. They have systematically sought to discredit the

Democratic field by portraying nearly everything those

candidates do and say as politically motivated.

That said, nearly every appearance Mr. Bush makes has

political overtones, and with the war in Iraq effectively

over, he is already shifting back into a more recognizable

partisan mode.

Already, the president's travel schedule is emphasizing

states that will prove pivotal in the 2004 election. He

went to Missouri last week and is heading for Ohio this

week. Since those trips are presented as official White

House travel, they were not billed against Mr. Bush's

re-election campaign.

The White House has made clear that Mr. Bush will not

provide an easy opening for Democrats by neglecting a

domestic agenda, as he now moves to draw on his political

strength as the leader of the nation during a time at war

to advance his domestic record. To that end, he visited a

fighter-jet production factory last week to pitch his tax

cut plan and is likely to use the setting of a tank factory

in Ohio this week to advance the same subject.

In Washington, Mr. Rove has quietly begun putting together

the team that will run the campaign, officials close to the

White House say. Ken Mehlman, the White House political

director, is expected to become the campaign manager. Jack

Oliver, the deputy chairman of the Republican National

Committee, is expected to become finance director. Matthew

Dowd will be the pollster, as he was in 2000, and Mark

McKinnon will be Mr. Bush's media strategist.

Karen P. Hughes, Mr. Bush's longtime communications

strategist, is likely to be a floating adviser in 2004.

Donald Evans, who was chairman of the 2000 Bush campaign

and is now commerce secretary, is expected to stay in the

administration but to counsel Mr. Bush in Washington. Mr.

Rove is planning to stay at the White House.

Even as Mr. Bush has remained silent, the Republican

National Committee, at the direction of the White House,

has methodically distributed information intended to

discredit his possible challengers and has set up a

full-fledged research effort into their backgrounds..

For example, when the Democrat that many of Mr. Bush's

advisers see as the most likely to win the nomination,

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, said in New Hampshire

that it was time for a "regime change" in the United

States, Republican organizations orchestrated attacks on

Mr. Kerry. That forced Mr. Kerry to explain his remarks for

a week.

In assessing Mr. Bush's potential opponents, Mr. Bush's

advisers said Mr. Kerry could be presented as ideologically

and culturally out of step, both because of his liberal

positions on some issues as well as his Boston lineage and

what some Bush advisers described as his haughty air.

Marc Racicot, the Republican national chairman, said

recently that Mr. Kerry "is going to have a hard time

translating out of New England." Another Bush adviser said

of Mr. Kerry, "He looks French."

Several said that another leading Democratic contender,

Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, could be the one

Democrat who could compete with Mr. Bush in the South. But

they argued that Mr. Edwards was open to attack both for

his close ties with trial lawyers and for his lack of

experience in government.

Mr. Racicot said Mr. Edwards could be portrayed as "slick

and shallow," while another Bush associate described Mr.

Edwards as the Breck Girl of politics, a reference to the

shiny-hair model for a popular shampoo in the 1960's.

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