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Bush, Staff Getting Used to Uncertainty

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

He’s still holding off on Cabinet announcements, and the title--for now--remains “governor.” But George W. Bush made his way into the Texas Statehouse Tuesday with a wide smile and a trademark thumbs up, more and more secure in his belief that he soon will be called “president-elect.”

Exactly when that may be, however, is a call few are making these days--nearly a month since Americans went to the polls.

While Bush forges ahead with his transition--telling CBS’ “60 Minutes II” on Tuesday night that there will be no role for his younger brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, in his administration--the efforts are being made in a sort of limbo.

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Bush aides here, as well as those dispatched to Florida and others in the rapidly growing transition office outside Washington, say they have grown accustomed to the waiting and the uncertainty.

‘We’re All Pretty Guarded’

“Everyone calls after every announcement wanting to know if we think it’s over,” Bush spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said. “But we’re all pretty guarded.”

It has been a lesson learned after the first postelection days, when moments of despair and jubilation stacked up so quickly that boosters on both sides suffered emotional whiplash.

“I think the attitude here is: ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” said one Bush staffer in the transition office. The days of fists pumping in the air and staffers unabashedly whooping at a judicial decision are long gone. “We’re never to the point where we are actually like, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve got it [won].’ ”

Not that Bush aides are worried. In fact, they are united in the belief that it’s now just a matter of time, a short wait for what they have believed inevitable since election night: Their man will be in the White House.

There is reason for their optimism: The Texas governor has had a good week in court.

First, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday vacated the Florida Supreme Court ruling that extended the deadline for manual vote recounts--sending it back to the state court for clarification.

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Then Leon County Circuit Court Judge N. Sanders Sauls rejected Vice President Al Gore’s request for a hand recount of 14,000 ballots.

Still, “I don’t know that [the recent decisions] are much different from any other part of this process,” Tucker said with the campaign’s now-trademark caution on such matters. “We always know that there can be an appeal. There is always an appeal.”

With more than 40 election lawsuits having been filed in Florida, those appeals have come from both Democrats and Republicans--as have the legal salvos.

Bush aides now are watching closely the Seminole County lawsuit filed by a Democratic Party contributor in an attempt to get about 15,000 absentee ballots tossed out because of irregularities involving how some of the ballot applications were completed.

A similar case out of Martin County could also disqualify nearly 10,000 absentee votes.

And in this climate of legal escalation and hard party lines, Tucker said, Bush aides are not convinced that the Tuesday deadline for naming Florida’s electoral college representatives will finally bring an end to the race.

“The electors have to be sent in by the 12th,” Tucker said. “Whether or not Al Gore will drag it out beyond that, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

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Bush, in his most extensive remarks since the election, told “60 Minutes II” that he has not lost any sleep over the turmoil and will take no special pleasure in seeing the man who beat his father out the door of the White House.

“It’s a natural question for people to ask. ‘Aren’t you thrilled that you’ve sought revenge?’ ” he said. “And I think that [the] American people, if they thought I was running to seek revenge, would have, you know, soundly rejected my candidacy.”

Staffers Making Sacrifices Too

While Bush expressed empathy for Gore on Tuesday--saying that the weeks since the election had been hard on both of them--campaign workers still slugging it out in the recount trenches pointed out that it has been hard on them too.

Planned family holidays have given way to days working on a campaign they thought would be long over.

One aide is supposed to get married Saturday. But half of the invited guests are still in Florida or hard at work in Washington.

Tucker--who noted that she had spent the Thanksgiving holiday doing television appearances--said she hopes to be able to let most of the invited staffers head back to Texas in time for the wedding.

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“It’s an interesting time,” Tucker said.

“Years from now, when we have a little distance, we’ll realize that we saw some pieces of history and some amazing things happen. And probably things that will come as a result of what has happened,” she said.

“In the middle of it, though, it’s just . . . well, let’s just say everyone is used to it by now.”

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