USTIN, Texas - The pecan trees are in bloom, the flowers are brilliant. Soon the famous Austin bats, one of the reasons the city has the liveliest nightlife in the Southwest, will be ricocheting under the bridge. All the smells of ripened spring - the sweet scents of possibility - are in the air.
In this atmosphere of great ripeness and hope, the men and women around Governor George W. Bush are toiling with a new sense of purpose. The poll results are encouraging, the candidate's performance is sharp, his proposals - on Social Security and taxes, for example - are daring enough for his rival to describe them as dangerous.
Amid this vernal idyll is a task that is full of possibility - and of peril. In the next 10 weeks the governor must choose a running mate. And for all the gamesmanship and brinkmanship being brought to bear on this process, two important guideposts - more revealing of Bush the man than of any broad principle of political behavior - are emerging.
A question of intuition
The first is chemistry. Bush is a man who reacts on instinct and impulse to others. He likes some, dislikes some. There is no middle ground, no room for misunderstanding, and no second chances. He is drawn to certain people, intuitively knows their inclinations. Most of all, he has a rare skill: He sees the personal quality that each person likes best about himself or herself. He watched his father as vice president for eight years, and he watched Dan Quayle as vice president for four years, and he knows that the vice presidency is a relationship, not a job.
The second factor is less well-known, less well-appreciated but no less avoidable. The shorthand for this factor: 2-11-53.
That's the birthdate of the governor of Florida, Jeb Bush. The Bushes are politicians, and the Bushes are a family, and George W. Bush is not likely to elevate anybody to national prominence who would be an obstacle to a future presidential campaign of his brother Jeb.
Which is itself revealing of the Republicans' nominee. If the Texas governor doesn't prevail in November, he almost certainly will finish out his second term here in Austin and then fade from politics. He was, in athletic parlance, a walk-on in politics in the first place. In defeat, he'd walk away.
George W. has the natural gifts in the family - the easy way, the ability to make others feel comfortable - but Jeb is the one the family expected would go places in politics. John F. Kennedy once said that he knew if something happened to his brother, Joseph Jr., who died in World War II, then he as the next-oldest brother would take his place at the head of the line in political life. Similarly, both George W. and Jeb know that if Vice President Al Gore wins the November election, Jeb would step up to the challenges of national politics. It is not spoken. It is known.
Choice running mates
And so, as former defense secretary Dick Cheney begins to vet candidates for the Republican running mate, the emphasis is on people born a half decade or more before 1953. That leaves the Republicans with many attractive choices - more, it turns out, than the Democrats. The Republican revolution of the 1990s on Capitol Hill and in the states had many implications, but this is the most enduring: Most of the governors are Republicans. Most of the leading lawmakers on Capitol Hill are Republicans.
Bush is a governor and, pointedly, has found his stride and his confidence as a governor, even in a governorship that, by law and by any measure, is among the nation's weakest. But Bush believes the challenges of executive office - of managing, of making crisp, unambiguous decisions, of leading rather than following - are what made him a mature national figure and a plausible presidential candidate. For that reason, he has always been drawn to his fellow governors. He feels a kinship with them. He feels comfortable with them.
That is why, even at a period when there is no short list and may not even be much of a long list of vice-presidential possibilities, it is the governors who attract Bush's attention, who engage his interest, who pique his curiosity. He is only the third person in world history to believe that the National Governors Association is one of the leading organizations in American life - the other two being Michael S. Dukakis and Bill Clinton. In truth, Bush is more NGA than Skull and Bones. The governors association was, more than Skull and Bones, where Bush came of age. It was, more than Skull and Bones, where he became a leader.
And so in the weeks to come, three figures, all of them Catholic, bear watching. One is Tom Ridge (governor of Pennsylvania, born in 1945). One is Frank Keating (governor of Oklahoma, born in 1944). One is George Voinovich (former governor of Ohio, born in 1936). Bush knows them, likes them - and his brother need not fear them.
