The Men Behind the Man : Bush’s Think Tank Gives Bid Cohesion, Direction

They regard themselves each as a part of George Bush’s personality.

They are the high-priced, six-man directorate of a campaign that has clinched the Republican presidential nomination. By the end of the campaign next November, they will have managed an $82-million enterprise through 50 states and assorted territories seeking what has not been achieved in 152 years--the election of a sitting vice president to the presidency.

They are all white men and all significantly younger than the 63-year-old vice president. Among them is a methodical chief executive officer type from California, a raffish Southern political maestro, a tell-them-to-go-to-hell Detroit blusterer, a careful Midwestern social scientist, a clever New York television showman and a Long Island body-and-fender political field man.

As for the Yankee blueblood of the personality, George Bush has that part for himself.

“Good chemistry; good bunch,” longtime presidential adviser Stu Spencer, one of America’s most respected Republican political consultants, says of the six.

“It’s obvious Bush didn’t go looking for a bunch of stars but people who know what they’re doing . . . . They’re not celebrity-class yet. But if they win, they will be.”

In any endeavor as complicated as a presidential campaign, responsibility, credit and blame are spread widely. More than 100 people work in one capacity or the other for the vice president, and Bush’s Rolodex is reputed to be as vast as any ever assembled.

But to keep it all together and provide its political bearings, Bush relies on two small groups. There are what can be called the “thinkers” and the “doers.”

The thinkers meet every week or so and are named the G-6 committee, an inside-the-Washington-beltway play on words taken from the G-7 group of countries at the annual international economic summit. There are six members, although others frequently are invited in. They grapple with the broadest themes and strategies, and oversee budgeting.

Then there are the six full-time senior staffers who are the doers. Four men sit in both groups.

This account is an introduction to the staffers, those who spent the last months on the front lines every day for Bush and who now prepare for a more difficult test ahead.

Many in Washington believe the vice president will call upon his longtime friend, Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III, to supervise the general election campaign in the fall. Until then, however, these are the six in the lights:

LEE ATWATER, 37, campaign manager.

He has been called part Tom Sawyer, part Tom Cruise. A one-time rock ‘n’ roll guitarist, a B-movie collector and a glutton for all variety of books, and he is the campaign’s most celebrated character .

He draws $10,000 a month for directing the resources and energies of the campaign, and building and maintaining the vaunted Bush political organization in each state. From Atwater emanates the plan for determining how the candidate divides his time, where he should go, what he will find when he gets there, to whom he should speak, and the like.

He also is an entertaining, occasionally controversial, spokesman for Bush, a member of the G-6 committee and a hot property in the Washington social whirl.

“One of my axioms is this: Never develop a pattern,” he says of his determination to keep others interested in him while at the same time keeping them off guard on his plans.

Bush and Atwater seem to connect because they are both consumed by politics. “They are both very political animals. Atwater has great knowledge of the people in politics, plus great institutional knowledge,” says one associate. “Bush loves that.”

Credited With Key Moves

Some of the most important strategic moves of the campaign are credited to Atwater. One was the decision to team Bush with governors in key states. The thinking was that governors have built-in organizations and the sharpest understanding of the local political chemistry and would be flattered if asked to be full partners. The thinking was right.

First in New Hampshire with Gov. John H. Sununu, Bush pulled his campaign together and sent chief opponent Kansas Sen. Bob Dole into a spin from which he would never recover. Sununu’s grasp of the voters there was instrumental in helping Bush shed the trappings of high office and present himself in human scale that New Hampshire residents demanded.

Then in South Carolina with Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr. and again in Illinois with Gov. James R. Thompson, the strategy produced decisive and well-timed victories.

Atwater also was behind the decision to persevere in the first-in-the-nation Michigan caucuses in January, even though most experts said it would be futile to tangle with Pat Robertson’s church army in this complicated, low-turnout event. Atwater said it could be won and it was. And Atwater later encouraged Bush to concede South Dakota and Minnesota to Dole after New Hampshire to concentrate on campaigning in the South, which proved decisive.

“Lee has the ability to look at something small and grasp its place in the big picture,” one co-worker said.

He also has a reputation as being ruthless. Many in the business profess to regret the seamy side of politics, but Atwater beholds it with delight.

His office hands out press clippings, including one that refers to a 1980 South Carolina congressional race. There, Atwater held a press briefing where he planted a reporter in the crowd to ask about an opponent’s supposed “psychiatric treatment.” Atwater graciously declined comment, but the doubt was effectively spread.

“I play the game hard and until the game is over, I try not to flinch,” he said.

Atwater has been both deputy political director for President Reagan and deputy campaign manager for Reagan-Bush in 1984. He rose out of a successful consulting career in South Carolina, beginning with Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) just at the time when Republicans were making gains in the South and were hungry for regional talent.

Reads at Wicked Pace

He reads at a wicked pace everything from Civil War battle strategies, to weighty portraits of leadership, to trashy shoot-’em-up crime potboilers--a fact worth mentioning chiefly because so few political professionals read more than their clippings.

Growing up in the heyday of the drive-in era, Atwater collects bad movies. He claims to have one entitled, “Three Men on a Meat Hook.” He is brimming with cracker-barrel regionalisms. “That dawg just won’t hunt,” he might say when he thinks poorly of an idea. He insists on calling women “baby” and men “boy” even though some find the habit as irritating as drawing fingernails across a chalkboard.

He is so impatient he simply cannot sit still, but disciplined enough to smoke cigarettes only one day a week--Fridays--and runs compulsively for fitness. His guitar playing is good enough for him to perform in public on occasion but not good enough to earn him a living if Bush loses.

He endlessly puts-on for effect, interrupting an interview in mid-sentence to bark out to an assistant: “Hey, CBS wants me on tomorrow to talk about Dukakis. I need some stuff. Short, 40-second sound-bite stuff. Slam-dunk kind of stuff.” Then he returns to the interviewer, “Now where were we?”

Few people feel neutral about him.

CRAIG FULLER, 37, chief of staff.

A native of Walnut Creek, Calif., Fuller is the managerial flywheel of the operation, the only important political operative who works at Bush’s government office in the White House.

Fuller probably spends more time with Bush than any staffer. As the gatekeeper, Fuller explains, “I make sure his schedule reflects his priorities.”

Fuller also supervises the governmental staff, including policy advisers, national security aides and the bodyguards and advance workers who arrange the complicated matter of transporting the vice president. Fuller sits with the G-6 committee of advisers.

His salary, the only one paid with government funds, is $7,458 a month.

A former aide to Ronald Reagan for Cabinet affairs, Fuller also has 7 1/2 years’ experience in the palace intrigues of the White House, and he is Bush’s most important staff link to the outgoing Administration.

Where Atwater attracts attention to himself, Fuller deflects it. If Atwater is daring, Fuller is cautious.

But, as throughout the staff, there seems to be unexpectedly little destructive tension even behind the scenes.

“One of George Bush’s values is teamwork. And that’s understood around here,” one associate said. “Another of his core values is loyalty. And that’s reflected, too.”

Worked With Deaver Firm

Fuller’s political experience is limited to the sum of what he has absorbed in Washington and from a stint at the Los Angeles public relations firm started by former White House aide Michael K. Deaver as well as an appointee in the Sacramento Administration of then-Gov. Reagan.

Perhaps because of his association with Deaver, Fuller also maintains a special interest in the kinds of settings Bush is placed in when he makes public appearances. During his White House days, Deaver was renowned for his ability to evoke pageantry and leadership by giving Reagan good backdrops.

One of Fuller’s seeming favorites: Bush climbing in and out of the cockpits of airplanes--a backdrop that makes effective news pictures and usually brings an accompanying reference to Bush’s manly background as a World War II carrier pilot.

Because of his connections to California and friendships with some of the staffers of Gov. George Deukmejian and Sen. Pete Wilson, Fuller has been given a large share of the responsibility in putting together Bush’s forthcoming California campaign.

But he is not apt to be seen much except on the other side of the smoky, tinted glass of the vice presidential limousine.

“I don’t need to be standing in every picture,” he says.

ROBERT S. TEETER, 49, pollster.

Each election, campaign pollsters seem to grow in importance, if such a thing can still be possible. And Teeter proves it is.

No longer is the pollster someone who just gathers information. The pollster must be someone who can determine what is important from among the ballooning volumes of data generated in presidential politics, someone who knows what will change voter perceptions once they are measured, someone who knows the difference between what people say they want and what they do want.

So the pollster has become the guru. Teeter is the old man of the staff, and also the one with the most campaigns notched on his gun butt, having worked on every GOP presidential race for the last two decades.

Teeter is a member of the G-6 think-tank committee, and earlier this month resigned as president of his Detroit-based Market Opinion Research to devote full time to the campaign. His salary is $20,000 a month.

His title is senior adviser. He serves as pivotal strategist in development of what is known in the argot of politics as “the message,” which is shorthand for some combination of a candidate’s principles, specific programs, generalized propositions and visions for tomorrow.

Content Counts

Teeter’s axiom is this: “There is a danger in spending too much time and money worrying about how to get the message out and not enough on what the message is. You’ve got to get the content of the campaign right and then worry about how to get it out.”

There is often a chilly calculatedness about pollsters. Aren’t they the cynical finger-to-the-wind types who make politicians do or say almost anything to get themselves elected? Perhaps. But at this level of politics, with literally thousands of reporters and supporters scrutinizing each candidate over a period of years, it is so difficult to succeed at brazen wind-driven changes of position that only the truly desperate dare try.

“There’s just no computer back there somewhere that tells us if you do this you’ll get the Irish over 40,” Teeter says.

Adds another staffer: “If you’ve gone this far and you need a pollster to tell you that America is frightened about drugs, something is wrong.”

Rather, the message becomes a matter of ideas in degree, emphasis, priority, freshness and creativity.

“The voters are most concerned by what kind of a person they are going to put in office. The issues are a way to judge that,” Teeter says.

Teeter travels frequently with Bush and is a favorite of reporters and supporters, who find him approachable, quotable and pithy and no-nonsense. He usually sides with Fuller and the more reserved axis of the staff.

ROGER AILES, 47, media consultant.

Scrappy, proud and private, Ailes rose to the top of the big-money business of political television advertising before taking on Bush. Ailes sits with the G-6 advisers, but he is the only important political hand who also serves other clients (seven Senate candidates), in addition to the vice president. Bush pays him $20,000 a month.

His philosophy is designed to be reassuring and unsettling at once.

“I just kind of build a bridge between the candidate and the people,” he says. But he adds: “I’m told one of the reasons I win the most is because I’m the least predictable . . . . I don’t tip off my strategy until I do it.”

So far, his 1988 commercials for Bush have been teasingly eclectic. An uplifting biography of the vice president with the theme “Ready from day one to be President” was mixed with a handful of issue-based advertisements tailored to specific regions. Best remembered was an old-fashioned, hard-hitting attack spot that debuted in New Hampshire and questioned whether Dole was a straddler on tax increases.

Serves as Debate Coach

More than making advertisements, however, Ailes has quietly coached Bush over months on how to handle himself on television debates, news interviews and in his speeches. The medium has not been terribly kind to Bush, often seeming to make him appear small, awkward and tinny-voiced.

Virtually everyone close to the vice president notices improvements in this campaign.

The country saw the results in Bush’s better-than-anticipated performances in Republican candidate debates. But perhaps most memorable was his angry showdown with television anchorman Dan Rather last January, an encounter in which Ailes was significantly involved. Bush, insisting he be interviewed live, not on tape, deflected questions about the Iran-Contra scandal by baring his teeth and claiming CBS was unfairly emphasizing the issue.

“I don’t take any crap and I advised the vice president not to take any crap,” Ailes says.

Ailes resists publicity for himself. He was chief media consultant for Deukmejian’s California reelection in 1986 and was virtually never seen. He lives by that old maxim: “When you stick your head up, you become a target.”

PETER B. TEELEY, 48, communications director.

Teeley has been through more with Bush for longer than any of them, and he is said to know the vice president best.

An immigrant who came to the United States from England with his family after World War II, Teeley carries himself like a 1940s private eye, which is to say hard-boiled. His mouth perpetually busy with a snarl, a cigarette or a swear word, he approaches reporters as if to say: Push me, pal, and I’ll shove you down the stairs.

During the climatic close of Bush’s 1984 reelection, Teeley raged at the press, and feelings between the vice president and reporters went into a deep freeze for months. Teeley left Bush’s staff afterward for a lucrative Washington consulting business, where his clients included Jim Bakker’s PTL ministry among others.

These days, paid $6,000 a month, the dour Teeley personality is intact but the fight in him has grown tempered. Bush’s relations with the press have vastly improved in this campaign so far, as have his skills for generating positive news coverage and minimizing negative stories.

With presidential campaigns limited by law these days in how much they can spend, press coverage--or “free media” as politicians call it--plays a much larger role than in a race for governor, say, or the U.S. Senate.

Accessibility Issue

The techniques Teeley and Co. employ are familiar: Keep Bush at a distance (Secret Service bodyguards are happy to do the job) from national reporters who might ask him about some unpleasant Washington matter. Meanwhile, make Bush accessible to local reporters who are more apt to let him have questions like, “How do you like Tupelo, sir?”

Disciplined, up before dawn, Bush calls drive-time radio news and talk shows where his stature as vice president and the introduction, “White House calling” assure him air time.

“We made it an art form,” says Teeley. “I’d say at least three states, North Carolina, Missouri and Oklahoma went our way because of press coverage (during the Super Tuesday campaign).”

At the same time, Bush, in controlled settings, is opening himself to national reporters and profile writers and showing more personal warmth. He frequently strolls to the back of Air Force Two to chew the fat and occasionally will host a relaxed off-the-record gathering. All of which tends to humanize the candidate and make it more difficult for reporters and editors to believe whatever awful thing his opponents might later say about him.

“There is a much greater comfort level now between Bush and the press,” Teeley says.

Not to mention between Teeley and the press.

RICHARD N. BOND, 38, political director, deputy campaign manager.

Brassy and good natured, Bond, 38, is probably the most popular member of the operation, even though he acknowledges: “A major part of this job is saying no to people.”

He has a sensitive nose for sniffing out where the action is. Unfortunately for him, this put him in Iowa last winter. He had engineered Bush’s Iowa victory way back in 1980. So when things looked gloomy this race, Mrs. Bush, in a show of family concern and influence, “volunteered” Bond to the rescue. Of course, it was an impossible job to defeat Bob Dole in the Farm Belt in 1988, and Bond had to swallow a bitter loss.

A native of Long Island, Bond served between elections as a deputy to Bush in the White House and built his own political consulting business. In the past he carried on a feud with Atwater, but that seems to have passed and Bond now preaches there is no time for Republicans fighting each other.

Happily back in his corner office of the Washington headquarters, political toolbox in hand, Bond will be found hammering away on whatever part of the machine needs straightening. He describes a weekend in the life of a $9,000-a-month political director:

“Well, people in Arizona want a big-name surrogate to speak at their convention. And then, in Nevada--I had to go out there. It was their convention, and there was some trading with the Robertson people over the naming of delegates. I kind of watched over that.

“Then I met with Sen. McCain, John McCain (Republican of Arizona and former Vietnam POW). He’s interested in helping us on veteran’s issues in the fall. We worked on a plan. Then I went and saw Sen. Grassley (Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who supported Dole). And we talked about unity. And now, we’ve got all these California people here and we’re about to meet with them . . . . “