ALL IN THE FAMILY

The Kerry campaign made much more fundamental mistakes, at least in the view of the Bush-Cheney team. Kerry and his advisers failed to understand that the election would not be decided by the candidates' stands on the issues, but rather by more visceral concerns. Dowd and Karl Rove were wonkish students of academic literature on voter attitudes, lapping up obscure studies on such matters as turnout and target precincts. But they didn't need to read much to understand that post-9/11 voters cared more about strength and resolve than a candidate's 10-point plan to reform immigration or Medicare. Kerry bounced around from issue to issue, theme to theme, while Bush stuck with one overriding message: unwavering strength. ("Wrong and strong," the pundits began to write, "beats bright and right.")

George W. Bush has no use for psychobabble about his persona. "If you're the president, you don't have time to try to figure out who you are," he told a pair of NEWSWEEK reporters aboard Air Force One in August. "I think it's unfair to the American people to sit in that Oval Office and try to find your inner soul." But that didn't stop his aides from trying to define the inner Bush for voters. In August, McKinnon gathered his media team for a brunch at Oscar's in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria to talk about polls but also to listen to a psychoanalyst named Stanley Renshon. The author of a mostly sympathetic book on the Bush family called "In His Father's Shadow," Renshon argued that voters wanted a president who could be both a strong leader and a consensus maker, two qualities that did not always go together. After 9/11, Americans wanted a hero--someone who would "mount the ramparts and charge up the hill," as Renshon put it--but they still wanted the president to be a warm, reassuring Everyman. As they asked questions at the restaurant that day, Bush's team wanted to know: how do you bridge the gap between the two?

The president needed someone who could bring out his softer, warmer side. So it was with a sense of relief that the Bushies welcomed Karen Hughes back onto the president's plane in August. Despite her decision in the spring of 2002 to go home to Austin to be with her family, the former White House communications director had never vanished altogether--she worked on Bush's big speeches and often chatted with Laura about kids and decorating. But it was important to have her imposing yet soothing presence near Bush as he campaigned. She was able to tell the candidate what he didn't want to hear, to walk "into the propellers," as McKinnon put it, and she had a good ear for lines that would appeal to women and moderate swing voters.

To serve red meat at the convention the Bush campaign enlisted Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Hollywood Terminator who had successfully recast himself as the California "Governator." Campaign advisers were slightly uneasy about whether "Ah-nold" would come on too strong for the folks back home. But in his prime-time convention address, the BC04 apparatus let the Governator get off his signature line, "Don't be economic girlie men!" (Afterward, Schwarzenegger called his speechwriter, Landon Parvin, from the convention hall. Parvin could hear the roaring crowd in the background. Schwarzenegger told the speechwriter he was glad the campaign hadn't nixed the "girlie man" line. "It just took the roof off the place," said Schwarzenegger.)

The convention planners also worried about overdoing 9/11. They had planned to introduce Bush by playing an emotional video for a Michael W. Smith song called "There She Stands," which played on the imagery of the Stars and Stripes over Ground Zero. When McKinnon first saw the video, he started to weep. But some staffers were concerned that the press would accuse the campaign of wrapping Bush in the flag. ("Too patriotic?" McKinnon asked himself. "And the problem with that would be?")

Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's old speechwriter, was drafted to craft a script for a new video. She had writer's block. "I'm just not getting it, guys," she told the BC04 team. "It's just not there." The campaign sent Noonan a bunch of photos and told her to try harder. McKinnon tried to imagine the speechwriter--a "feeler," he called her, "she's very artistic, very poetic... she's a feeler"--using the photos to get over her block. He thought of Noonan "getting naked and rubbing the pictures, lighting incense, channeling." Whatever: it seemed to work. A few days before the speech, Noonan delivered her script. The president's appearance was preceded by a short, moving video and no introduction. Bush just walked out on the convention floor. The faithful went wild.