I'M COMING AROUND to the view that George W. Bush has a lot more going for him than I figured.
I've been around long enough to understand that it's better to be lucky than good. Bush is lucky. Every time he's in danger of falling down, rolling over, getting creamed, or otherwise being flattened by political forces more powerful than those he rides with, some one or some thing intervenes.
A year ago, when George W. was supposed to be invincible and Senator John McCain's insurgency was just a speck of dust on the New Hampshire horizon, the Republican Party fell all over itself to embrace Bush. All the governors, most of the senators and congressmen, and the vast majority of the lobbyists and moneymen flocked to Bush.
They gave this untried rookie national candidate mountains of cash, more than $100 million to his campaign machine alone, never mind the indirect, in-kind, and around-behind-the-barn cash that makes politics go. This laying-on of hands, and the layering-up of favors-to-be-returned by the special interests, is what held Bush together when Hurricane McCain hit in New Hampshire.
After surviving the primaries, picking Dick Cheney, and running a fair convention, Bush sat back as Al Gore picked Joe Lieberman, ran his own fair convention, and trotted out to a mid-fall lead. Bush initially ducked the debates. But when he fell behind, he accepted three, and emerged from the debate period ahead, beneficiary of some weak-minded strategy by Gore and the media's hostility to the wooden VP's personality.
But on election night, Gore won some close battleground states and - initially, tentatively - Florida, which is in the ballgame still, five weeks after the fact. How Bush won Florida - if in fact he did win it, which I doubt - is an amazing story. It starts with his cousin, John Ellis, a former Boston Globe columnist on this page, who quit the newspaper after saying here in print that he found Bill Clinton ''loathsome'' and that he could not be objective about assessing the candidacy of his cousin.
Here's where that Bush ''luck'' begins to kick in. Ellis is hired by the Fox network to advise it on election night ''calls,'' awarding which state to which candidate, as part of the TV networks game of one-upping the competition. Ellis admits to conferring regularly during the day and night with Bush the candidate and Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida.
Well after 2 a.m., Bush nudges the Fox anchor team to award Florida to his cousin. The Murdoch network announces that ''call,'' and three rival networks, their experts equally exhausted and confused, fall into the same trap. Ellis's match ignites the network tinder, and ''Bush Wins'' is the headline that colors everything that comes later.
There's more luck in store for Lucky George Jr. First, Bush's camp and the GOP overall outspent Gore and the Democratic National Committee's effort in Florida by a 3-2 margin, $14.5 to $10.1 million in the fall campaign. Gore had no outside groups spending on his behalf in Florida, reports the Brennan Center for Justice and the Pew Foundation; Bush got help from gun, antiabortion, and fundamentalist church money.
Florida's military personnel and retirees were massaged for Bush by Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf, retired generals from the elder Bush's regime. The Bush brother, Jeb, headed the Texan's in-state effort. Katherine Harris, the secretary of state, kindled a below-the-radar-screen effort to purge the voting rolls of black voters who'd had run-ins with the law.
The absentee vote scheme the GOP mounted with telling effect also benefited from the encouragement and cooperation of various state and county officials. The election machinery was rigged in such a way as to make black voters in pro-Gore precincts wait longer and face more ballot frustrations than in conservative rural areas and the Panhandle, where Bush won some counties by better than 3-1 margins.
Election officials gave the pro-Bush precincts laptop computers to cut down waiting time and make it easier for Bush-leaning precincts to vote. And so on. Came the recount push and Mr. Lucky got help from all kinds of lawyers ready to block any recount that threatened to overturn Bush's razor-thin lead.
County canvassing boards took off, refusing to work holidays, weekends, or overtime. A Republican rent-a-mob mobilized by Dick Armey and financed by Bush money intimidated one county into giving up its recount. On we go to the US Supreme Court, and Mr. Lucky wins again. By 5-4, the thinnest of majorities, the high court halts the Florida recount dead in its tracks.
The two judges whom Gore had attacked and Bush defended, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, went for Mr. Lucky, natch. It turns out Mrs. Virginia Thomas, the justice's wife, is busy over at the Heritage Foundation, gathering resumes for people who want jobs in the next Bush administration.
She used to work for Dick Armey and ''spearheaded a leadership effort to gather embarrassing information about the Clinton-Gore administration,'' the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.
So you tell me: Is George W. lucky, or what?
David Nyhan'semail address: nyhan@globe.com.
