Bush Camp Cautiously Favors Dean

Howard Dean’s continuing momentum in the Democratic presidential race is forcing President Bush’s political strategists into a tough balancing act: nourishing their hope of a Bush-Dean race while guarding against overconfidence.

“No matter who the Democratic nominee is, any competent Democrat starts out with 46% or 47% of the vote,” Charles Black, a veteran Republican strategist, quoted Karl Rove, the president’s chief political advisor, as telling him.

“That’s the fundamental premise: Expect a close race,” Black said.

But that cautionary mantra contrasts sharply with the public glee with which many on the political right view the prospects of Bush-Dean contest. “Please nominate this man,” says the current cover of the conservative magazine National Review, under an unattractive picture of an angry Dean, fists clenched in mid-rant.

Rove himself earlier this year publicly rooted for Dean. At a neighborhood Fourth of July parade here, as a dozen Dean supporters marched by, Rove chuckled and said out loud: “That’s the one we want.... Go, Howard Dean!”

Many Republicans subscribe to the theory that Dean would be Bush’s dream opponent. Their reasoning: Dean, largely untested in the national crucible, opposes the Iraq war, wants to roll back the Bush tax cuts and, as governor of Vermont, signed legislation allowing civil unions between gays. They believe he is so far to the left that he will leave the vast center of the American electorate ripe for Bush’s plucking.

But as the president’s job-approval ratings have sagged amid the messy occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and as an improving economy has failed to generate many new jobs, a Dean candidacy no longer evokes the unrestrained relish it once did at the Bush-Cheney ’04 headquarters in Arlington, Va.

“Dean could still implode,” said Scott Reed, a longtime GOP tactician. “But right now he has money, message and momentum. And he’s handling himself pretty well.”

In particular, Dean is already polishing his centrist credentials, pointing out on the stump that he was a budget-balancing governor and a supporter of the rights of gun owners. Although he remains an opponent of the war in Iraq, he says he supports a strong national defense.

Along with Rove, top Republican officials such as Ken Mehlman, the president’s campaign manager, are telling their troops and supporters throughout the country to expect nothing short of a knock-down, drag-out cliffhanger next year.

“Their base is going to be fired up and rally around the nominee, and our base is going to be fired up. So it’s going to be tight, no matter who it is,” one GOP strategist said.

And the Republicans are getting ready for a fight.

Already flush with the biggest presidential campaign treasury in history -- now exceeding $100 million -- the Bush camp is embarked on an intricate, grass-roots organizing effort designed to mobilize voters. There are more than 6 million people on its e-mail list, and officials said the campaign was well on its way to its goal of registering at least 3 million new Republican voters.

“We have a very committed group of people, whether in Arlington, Va., or Arlington, Texas,” said Terry Holt, a Bush campaign spokesman. As an example, he said, a Wednesday night session in Miamisburg, Ohio -- part of a nationwide effort to train tens of thousands of activists -- drew 300 people, twice the expected turnout.

“Between Mehlman and [Republican National Committee Chairman Ed] Gillespie, they’re putting together an organization that will drag voters out from under rocks,” said GOP strategist Mary Matalin, a former White House advisor who remains close to the Bush camp.

She rejected the notion that campaign workers or Bush supporters were overconfident about the president’s political prospects. “No matter what the environment, you’ve got to say, ‘Everybody has to work hard,’ ” she said.

Republicans eager for a Bush-Dean campaign point to polls showing the president faring better against Dean than against any other major Democratic candidate. For instance, in a recent Time/CNN poll, Bush beat Dean 52% to 40% among registered voters nationwide, while Bush’s theoretical vote dropped to 49% to 42% against either Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts or retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark.

The president intends to cast himself, as he did in 2000, as a “reformer with results.” As prime exhibits, he has been touting his education reform bill and the recently signed legislation adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare.

Still, some Republicans -- perhaps in an effort to counter any overconfidence in the Bush camp -- have begun to acknowledge in recent weeks that, like Dean, Bush has his own vulnerabilities. Perhaps the biggest is that he probably will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs.

Among the most vocal in sounding the alarm about complacency or overconfidence is William Kristol, a prominent Republican and editor of the influential Weekly Standard.

In an opinion piece this week in the Washington Post, Kristol pointed out that Democrats have won the popular election in each of the last three presidential contests and that demographic trends, especially the increasing number of Latino voters, favor Democrats.

Moreover, Kristol said, Dean -- unlike former Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, the last Northeastern Democrat nominated for president -- is no “patsy.” Dukakis was trounced by Bush’s father in the 1988 presidential election.

“Underdogs do sometimes win,” Kristol added. “Howard Dean could beat President Bush. Saying you’re not overconfident is no substitute for really not being overconfident.”