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 BUSH: ELECTION WILL BE CLOSE, BUT I'LL WIN Sun Feb 29 2004 09:53:30 ET The Bush campaign no longer uses the shorthand phrase Massachusetts's liberal, TIME's Matt Cooper and John Dickerson report. "Campaign and Republican National Committee rapid-response makers had been labeling Kerry a 'Massachusetts liberal,' not knowing that Bush likes attacks to be more specific," Cooper and Dickerson write. "He doesn�t like it because it doesn�t tell you anything," a top Bush aide tells TIME. "Tell people what that means. That�s what he wants." President George W. Bush predicted the November election will be close � but that he will win � last Monday night at the White House, TIME reports. After Bush had given his first real campaign speech of the season to Republican governors last Monday, he invited five back to the White House for dinner and a chance to spend the night. "Over a batter-dipped feast in his private dining room that would have given Dick Cheney�s cardiologist the bends�fried shrimp, fried onion rings, corn on the cob, French fries, cole slaw and cheesecake�Bush was jovial, confident," TIME reports. "He told the group�George Pataki of New York, Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, Jim Douglas of Vermont and his Floridian brother Jeb�that the presidential race would be close but that he would win. Bush�s legendary self-confidence was on full display. 'You guys have the best job in government.' He smiled, leaning back. 'Actually you have the second best job in government.'" This week the President�s re-election team will air its first television ads of the presidential campaign, "a salvo designed to re-establish the President in the public mind as a decisive, principled leader, uniquely equipped to strengthen the economy and win the war on terrorism," Cooper and Dickerson write. Bush advisers say the spots will not go after Democratic frontrunner John Kerry. "We�re going through a process: first, correct everything that�s been said about the President, and then we�re going to correct the impressions about the [Democratic] nominee," says pollster Matthew Dowd. The Bush campaign has asked focus groups about the Massachusetts Senator. Not surprisingly, officials say, he comes across just as Republicans have tried to caricature him: aloof and ambivalent. "He is not a look-you-in-the-eye kind of guy," one tells TIME. Much of the $41 million the Bush campaign has spent so far out of the $140 million raised has been on ground organization, Cooper and Dickerson write. "The Bush team has county chairs in all the 1,189 counties in 18 of the target states from 2000. They have held 127 regional training sessions. By June, they will have made 800,000 phone calls to Republicans. Almost 200,000 volunteers have signed on." |
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