The President: Bush's team was upbeat. But not everyone was sure about the race
Newsweek
Nov.
15 issue - Karl Rove called the group "the Breakfast Club." They met at
Rove's unadorned house in northwest Washington on Saturday, Dec. 13,
2003, the day Saddam Hussein was captured in Iraq. It had already been
a week of cheering news for the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign. A few days
earlier, former vice president Al Gore had endorsed the Democratic
front runner, Howard Dean. The Democratic establishment seemed to be
lining up behind Dean. The Bush-Cheney campaign could only pray that
the Democrats would not come to their senses. Rove's team had already
assembled a phone-book-thick volume of opposition research on Dean,
titled "Howard Dean Unsealed: Second Edition, Wrong for America" (on
the cover was a collage of 13 pictures of Dean looking addled). The
Bushies had been poring over footage of the former Vermont governor on
the campaign trail. Adman Mark McKinnon's media team had cut a spot
called "When Angry Democrats Attack!" featuring a wild Dean ranting and
raving, and posted it on the Bush-Cheney Web site.
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Rove
had called this meeting of his top advisers to discuss all the ways
they were going to bury Howard Dean. Matthew Dowd, the campaign's
pollster and strategist, was known as a pessimist, but even he conceded
to the group, "You have to give the direction arrow to Dean at this
point."
The
strategy was obvious: a barrage of ads featuring President Bush as
"steady" and Dean as "reckless." The group laughed about some of the
scripts they had cranked out for a campaign McKinnon was calling "Dean
Unplugged." An early favorite, submitted by Fred Davis, a California
adman known by the nickname Hollywood (he drove a Porsche, wore tinted
sunglasses and had shared a suite in college with Paul Reubens, the
actor better known as Pee-wee Herman), opened with the image of a
mother anxiously flipping channels as her baby lies in a crib behind
her. Howard Dean is on the TV screen, hyperventilating. The baby begins
to fret and cry ... then the voice of George W. Bush, strong,
comforting, resolute, replaces Dean on the screen. The baby quiets and
sleeps peacefully.
It was an open secret
that Karl Rove was itching to take on Dean. Back in July, Rove had been
seen standing in a crowd near his home in Washington, watching Dean
pass by in an Independence Day parade. Rove was quoted as chortling:
"Heh, heh, heh, that's the one we want. Go, Howard Dean!" Misquoted,
Rove insisted to NEWSWEEK (the witness, he claimed, was a "lefty," a
Sierra Club member). Rove said he simply joined in the chanting, "Two,
four, six, eight, why don't we all bloviate!"
"Bloviate"
is a favorite Rove-ism. Others, often expressed by e-mail: "Yeah baby!"
"Attawaytogo!" and, more obscurely, "It's Miller time!" Rove was the
unquestioned boss of the campaign to re-elect the president. Everyone
reported to him; even local GOP bosses checked with him before making a
move. The group he gathered around his dining-room table this December
morning was the tight little inner circle—Dowd, campaign manager Ken
Mehlman, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, campaign
Communications Director Nicolle Devenish. The group was secret at
first; other top staffers only gradually learned of its existence. As
winter turned to spring, Rove would occasionally add other guests. For
a Republican, there was no greater call to duty than an invitation from
Rove to join the Breakfast Club.
King Karl,
ruler of a vast domain, was held in awe by all (except Bush, who from
time to time referred to his chief political adviser as Turd Blossom).
Rove had never stopped campaigning since the 2000 squeaker. From the
moment he walked into the White House in 2001, he had been building the
Republican base, the vast Red State army of evangelicals; flag-waving
small-town and rural American Dreamers; '60s-hating, pro-death-penalty,
anti-gay-marriage social conservatives; Big Donors—the new Republican
majority, or so Rove hoped. A steady wave of e-mails (appropriately
studded with Rove-isms), notes, photos, anniversary cards and White
House Christmas-party invitations stroked the faithful. But discipline
was the key: Rove set up a reporting system designed to hold
accountable party bosses and volunteers alike. He created the mystique
of an all-seeing, all-knowing boss of bosses; if the emperor had no
clothes, no one particularly wanted to find out.
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• Behind the Bush Win NEWSWEEK's Editor Mark Whitaker discusses how the Republicans got the better of John Kerry (Courtesy of CNN)
NEWSWEEK
A
Rove colleague called him "five-dimensional." His friends as well as
his enemies described him as generous, crude, charming, repellent,
thoughtful, vindictive, funny, mean, brilliant and foolish. Plump and
balding, a jolly joker, he could be savage. In Esquire magazine, writer
Ron Suskind recalled sitting outside Rove's office waiting for an
interview to begin. Inside, he wrote, he could hear Rove bellowing at
an aide, "We will f--- him. Do you hear me? We will f--- him. We will
ruin him. Like no one has ever f---ed him!" (A White House spokesman
has said that Suskind has a "hyperactive imagination.") But Rove was
well aware of his reputation and cultivated it. On Halloween 2003, a
NEWSWEEK reporter teased Rove for not wearing a costume. "I'm scary
enough," he replied.
Rove made little
attempt to hide his feelings. Poking his head into the crowded press
cabin on Air Force One during a trip on a frigid day in January, he
snarled, "Weenies!" In December 2003 Rove's joy at the prospect of
systematically destroying Dean was plain for all to see. After the
capture of Saddam Hussein, the president's approval rating rose to 63
percent. As Dean continued to fulminate, as reporters no longer
described his bluntness as "refreshing" and instead began the old
gotcha game, jumping on the green governor's "gaffes," Rove & Co.
watched as Dean's negative rating climbed to 39 percent.
HOW BUSH DID IT
NEWSWEEK's exclusive, behind-the-scenes account of the presidential campaign
Other
advisers worried about too much of a good thing. Too much Republican
gloating over a Dean candidacy might make the Democrats wake up. "We
don't want to tip this thing too far," McKinnon, the campaign's chief
media man, fretted in December. "Our concern is that it will collapse
on him." But Rove didn't seem concerned. John Kerry had been the
presumptive front runner back in the spring of 2003, but by autumn he
was not even a blip on the radar screen. At strategy sessions of the
Bush-Cheney campaign he was a "nonentity," recalled one Bush adviser.
In October, Rove had said that Kerry had "p---ed away every advantage
of the front runner." Wes Clark? "Imploded," Rove concluded. Joe
Lieberman and John Edwards? "Nowhereville!" he exulted. (Most of the
BC04 staff figured Edwards would be the toughest foe, but the North
Carolina senator couldn't seem to raise money or get noticed.) Only
Dick Gephardt, Rove thought, still had a chance, and not much of one.
Rove was so convinced that Dean would be the president's foe in the
general election that he began making small wagers around the White
House, betting hamburgers that Dean would prevail.
As
the holidays approached, the Bush White House was as jolly as Rove. On
Dec. 20 the Bush daughters, Jenna and Barbara, both college seniors,
decided to hold a blowout for their friends in the Executive Mansion.
Jenna, a young lady with her father's eye for a good time, had heard
about a band from Nashville that was a big favorite at Southern
good-ole-boy fraternity parties. The band, formally called the Tyrone
Smith Revue, was better known as Super T. The bandleader, Tyrone Smith,
would appear for the second set wearing a red cape and a bright blue
jumpsuit emblazoned with a giant T.
The
Tyrone Smith Revue set up in the East Room, usually used for press
conferences. Shortly after 9, when the drinks were flowing and the kids
were starting to glow, Super T swung into "Shotgun" and summoned the
president, the First Lady and the twins onto the stage. "I want the
Secret Service to stay back!" he cried. "I'm taking over now!" Super T
began to instruct the First Family in a dance called the Super T Booty
Green. ("Put your hands on your knees. Bend over. Shake two times to
the right, shake two times to the left.")
The
First Family got right down. The crowd erupted. Super T picked up the
beat; he later recalled hearing a familiar voice cry, "Go, Super T!" He
looked back to see the president of the United States hollering and
shaking it like in old times at the Deke House. Laura Bush gently put
her hand on the president's elbow; the frat brother subsided; the chief
executive returned to duty.
The Bushes went
to bed that night at 11:30, about two hours after the president's usual
bedtime. As he dozed off, or tried to, a conga line twisted along the
red carpet he usually walked down for formal press conferences. (Before
the president retired, Super T offered to play at the Inaugural. Bush
just grinned.)
