Bush Remained Confident of Win

After monitoring the election returns off and on for about 15 hours, a confident President Bush issued a final order as he headed off to bed at 5 a.m. Wednesday: Give the senator some space; upon reflection, he surely will do the right thing.

Almost precisely six hours later, as Bush mingled with senior aides in the Oval Office, presidential assistant Ashley Estes interrupted with a message: Sen. John F. Kerry was on the line.

Kerry congratulated Bush on his victory. It was, by all accounts, a cordial conversation, lasting three to four minutes.

“I think you were an admirable, worthy opponent,” Bush told the Massachusetts senator, a White House spokesman related later. “You waged one tough campaign.... I hope you are proud of the effort you put in. You should be.”

Earlier, when some aides -- recalling the bitter Florida recount of 2000 -- suggested that Bush unilaterally proclaim victory, “the president flatly rejected it,” said Karl Rove, the president’s top political strategist.

“It’s 5 in the morning. It’s not going to help the country for me to go out there.... Let’s all get some sleep and think about this in the morning,” Rove quoted his boss as saying before retiring for the night.

After his late-morning conversation with Kerry, Bush hugged half a dozen or more of his aides before walking down a West Wing corridor to seek out Vice President Dick Cheney.

Following an exchange of congratulations, the president headed upstairs to see Laura Bush.

From Tuesday afternoon until the wee hours of Wednesday morning, it was Rove who kept spirits up at the White House, repeatedly telling Bush and anyone within earshot of the command center in the Old Family Dining Room that exit polls were dead wrong in pointing toward a Bush defeat.

“I got the first wave ... and they didn’t make sense,” Rove said. “It was absurd.”

Rove, who by Wednesday evening had gone more than 56 hours without sleep, spent much of Tuesday afternoon and evening contacting influential Republicans around the country, urging them to ignore the polls, recalling that the same polls four years earlier had pointed toward a Gore victory.

Bush also was convinced the exit polls were wrong.

As Rove and others weighed the returns, the president and Laura Bush entertained 25 to 30 guests, including the president’s parents, upstairs at the White House. Televisions were set up in the White House residence, where guests could follow the news reports.

Rove said Bush thought that he would win the election after conferring Tuesday night with his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, who reported that the Bush-Cheney ticket was “dramatically beating” the campaign’s target goals in the state.

By 9:30 p.m., Bush felt confident enough to invite a small group of reporters up to the residence for a photo opportunity, telling them: “I feel good about it.”

Still, the president stayed up for another eight hours, retiring at an hour that he usually awakened. Bush slept for less than two hours, and by 8 a.m. he was back in the Oval Office. After receiving his daily intelligence reports, the president made a slew of congratulatory calls to fellow Republican winners.

After a workout and lunch, Bush delivered his victory speech.

“America has spoken, and I’m humbled by the trust and confidence of my fellow citizens.”