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George W.'s California swing
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By Anthony York
[06/29/99]

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For a journalist, Bush's California swing was a tedious grind. But anyone who headed home after that first morning of $1,000 yogurt in San Diego would have missed the most noteworthy thing about George W. Bush and his political team: its complete mastery of the media.

As they were whisked from fund-raiser to photo op and back to their hotels, even the most seasoned reporters constantly marveled at the professionalism of the campaign, still 16 months from the general election. The general consensus was that the only thing separating Bush's visit from a presidential visit were the freeway-closing motorcades and the Secret Service.

Bush's skill as a retail campaigner should "send a shiver down the spines" of Democratic hopefuls Bill Bradley and Al Gore, says Dee Dee Myers, former press secretary to President Clinton and now political editor for Vanity Fair, who caught up with Bush as he addressed a group of teachers in Los Angeles.

Politics is perception, and the Bush people did everything they could to make the three-day swing feel like a presidential visit. Fund-raising estimates for each event were consistently low-balled, giving the trip a sense of momentum when the larger dollar figures were announced. There were black-car motorcades, two full-sized media buses and a horde of dark-suited staffers with wires in their ears and ominous black-and-red pins on their lapels that looked as though they could have been issued by the Secret Service. At every stop, reporters were whisked into press-quarantine areas laden with opulent spreads of poached salmon and imported beer as the governor was upstairs in the hotel ballroom raking in the dough.

Though reporters traveled with him for three days, Bush's team did not leave much time for the candidate to meet the press. We saw mostly what the Bush team wanted us to see. The candidate only granted a single one-on-one interview, a Spanish-language chat with Univision that will air this weekend; the other reporters had to settle for one formal press availability, which only lasted 15 minutes. That, and a short "nice to see you" on the airport tarmac when he arrived Monday night, was all the access the traveling media had to the GOP front-runner.

And even that single press availability was choreographed by the Bush team to coincide with the leak of his daunting fund-raising totals. Those record-breaking numbers predictably dominated the following day's headlines, ensuring that even if reporters had miraculously pinned the governor down on an issue and he somehow managed to make news at the press conference, it would dissipate among all the zeros in Bush's mighty financial figures. It didn't matter: The softball questions from the press corps at his one mini-press conference ensured no other news escaped.

Part of the credit goes to the candidate himself. Bush is undeniably impressive on the stump: You can honestly believe his finance chairman when he says, in his standard introduction, "There is no one I'd rather hang out with than George W. Bush." At a campaign event with Oakland Raiders wide receiver Tim Brown in Sacramento, he tossed a football into a crowd of television cameras, sending some reporters scurrying. As he took the stage, he waved a white flag above his head in mock surrender. One reporter quipped sardonically, "I'll bet he was a real towel-snapper in college." Even when he's not horsing around with athletes, there's something about Bush that summons up the bonhomie of a men's locker room.

Next page | The Bush team's strategy: Raise lots of money and keep your mouth shut