Election Matters

As he began his seventh campaign swing this year through the battleground state of Wisconsin on a sunny day in late September, George W. Bush loaded a secret weapon onto his bus: Dr. Britt Kolar, a physician who played on the Yale rugby team with Bush in the 1960s. Seated at Bush's side as the bus rolled through Lake Geneva, where he practices, Kolar began feeding the President the names of people who were lined up along the side of the road and of small business owners who had stepped out to watch. "Hey, Mary," the President announced through the vehicle's loudspeaker system, "wish we could stop." "Hey there, this is the President. I hear you just opened your store. We're gonna help small businesses." On the President rolled, dropping references to local shops and restaurants and teams. It might sound hokey, but the crowds couldn't get enough. They were cheering themselves hoarse, and although the Bush bus never stopped in their community, they headed home talking about how the President of the United States had taken the time to talk to them personally.

For critics who have a hard time understanding why Bush--after all the revelations regarding his misdeeds in Iraq, after his mismanagement of the economy to the extent that he is the first President since Herbert Hoover to produce a net loss of jobs, and after his bungling of the first debate so badly that all the old questions about his IQ resurfaced--remains a viable contender, the answer is: the Bush campaign. And Bush is the campaigner in chief.

White House political czar Karl Rove is running the best-financed presidential campaign ever, one that is also doing a brilliant job of spinning the media. But the GOP's most effective tool is the candidate. "A lot of Democrats have a very hard time admitting this, maybe because they have never seen one of his rallies, but Bush is a very good campaigner," says George Lakoff, the Berkeley professor who has long argued against making the mistake of underestimating Bush's political skills. As in 2002, when Bush's energetic campaigning on behalf of House and Senate candidates, especially in the South, helped upset the traditional calculus that says the President's party loses ground in mid-term elections, he is campaigning with such determination and verve that it is not uncommon to hear backers like Beth Mueller, a 57-year-old Wisconsinite, describe his appearances in Racine as "electrifying."

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