CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- Time to stop picking Cabinet spots in a Bush administration. Time to stop war-gaming the general election. The strongest message to come out of the surprisingly well-attended straw vote Saturday in Ames: It might not hurt to let there be a little campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, particularly because Republicans seem to want one.
Lamar Alexander had the best analysis. There are two forces contending within the party, he said. One is to nominate the president in waiting. The other is to have a campaign first. What has happened here is that a resistible force has met a moveable object.
Here's my evidence:
While Bush's national campaign aides were spinning their way through the aftermath, his Iowa campaign team was more candidly grumpy. And while the front-runner crown remains theirs, they failed by 20 points to get the 50 percent vote total they were looking for and failed by half to open the 20-point margin over number two, Steve Forbes.
The extra turnout was at Bush's expense. He got his supporters to Ames, but a total vote of 24,000 or so, double the expectation, hurt instead of helped. The Bush crowd gave out roughly 10,000 $25 tickets to the show, but as many as 2,500 of the recipients may have voted for somebody else.
After the last speech (Alexander's) ended and state party officials began passing the word that the turnout had approached 25,000, there was one of those priceless moments in politics. For the next two hours, no one knew what it meant. Real suspense is not in the front-runner's play book.
What this means here is that Bush escaped with his big-shot status intact, but the key word is escape. The president in waiting will benefit from a divided right, but he now has two wild cards to contend with, in Elizabeth Dole and John McCain. More specifically, it means:
His people here want more campaigning days on his schedule through the fall, as do the Bushies in New Hampshire, which will clash with the Texas staff's preference for national flag-showing.
More days will mean more meat. Bush is currently campaigning with drivel that excites no one. Individual Republicans are happy to say they like Bush and especially like him if he can win the presidency. But this is like, not love, and it's a lousy motivator.
More of a campaign and less of a coronation will mean more engagement with his rivals. Campaign boss Karl Rove is already spreading the word that debates will occur. That means Bush needs to acquire a position on an issue or two.
Don't forget, however, that what happened here was at worst a wake-up call, and as Vice President Al Gore has been demonstrating here and in New Hampshire, the impact of that can be positive. If not in his own performance, Bush can still take considerable comfort from the nature of his opposition - united in its jealousy of Bill Bradley's ability to play one-on-one.
In the jammed hall Saturday night, one handmade sign caught my eye in Alexander's crowd. Befitting an age of hype and buzz, it read ''Better than Expected.''
But in the end that sentiment belonged to Elizabeth Dole. She surprised the pols and embarrassed the prognosticating press by pulling in people who don't ordinarily play this early, if ever. It was stunning; the noise in the hall for her was exceeded only by the roars for Pat Buchanan's one-liners.
But she will go nowhere without a campaign that offers more than her resume and a plea to ''make history.'' Her rhetorical drivel is as mushy as Bush's and can't expand her excited base.
Privately, the only people as grumpy as the Bush locals are those working for zillionaire Steve Forbes. His solid second rewarded very hard work in rural Iowa, but he's not showing strength in the larger communities, which means that if he starts attacking Bush, the beneficiaries are more likely to be Dole or McCain.
The Forbes claim is that he's now the right man. But last weekend's numbers say: Forbes, 4,921; Gary Bauer plus Bad Boy Buchanan plus Alan Keyes, 4,934.
Behind the numbers are two points: differences on economic issues with the free-market Forbes and lingering doubts about his commitment to social issues. He can't broker or buy his way into acceptance; his only choice is more of the same - hard campaigning and positive ads.
Which leaves John McCain.
He's now thinking of ditching the caucuses entirely next winter, but the odds on that gamble paying off later just went way up. The turnout in Ames destroyed McCain's claim of sham. It was nearly 20 percent of what comes out for the caucuses, and they all had a good, wholesome time stealing Pat Buchanan's barbecue sauce and staring at Crystal Gayle's ankle-length hair in the Alexander corral.
To remain apart, to act as if you're special - literally, like McCain, or figuratively, like Bush - is to court trouble.
Thomas Oliphant is a Globe columnist.
