asking in the warm glow of victory, Senator John McCain looked into a television camera Tuesday night and proclaimed to the American public that his maverick campaign had ''interfered with the coronation'' of George W. Bush. While New Hampshire voters enjoy upsetting front-runners, the defeat of privilege and political dynasty foretells future losses for George W. in other primaries, for many Americans will not allow a son simply to inherit the office.
Being the scion of a recent president has enabled George W. to raise the most money of any candidate in history, and has helped propel him to national prominence through name recognition. But his bloodline has also created a distraction because voters and the press increasingly compare George W. to his father, just as George W. has done for a fair portion of his life.
It is not an accident that George W. is campaigning for the presidency at age 53, one year younger than his father was when he first sought the Republican Party's nomination. The son has carefully traced many of his father's steps, keeping pace with him while trying to develop distinctively.
But when the former president appeared on center stage campaigning for his son in New Hampshire last week, he physically outsized him. Shorter, thinner, George the Younger looked like a man who didn't fill his father's shoes, but was desperately trying.
It was a physical reminder of the nagging suspicion that George W. isn't as experienced as his father was when he first ran for the nomination against Ronald Reagan in 1979. At that time, George H. had served his country in national and international positions for nine years as director of the CIA, ambassador to China, ambassador to the United Nations, and as a US representative from Texas.
George the Younger has never held a national office. He ran for Congress in 1978, but lost. The bulk of his experience, nearly 20 years, has been as an entrepreneur, mainly building oil and gas-related businesses in Texas. After getting an MBA from Harvard University, he invested $15,000 (left over from a fund set up for his education) in properties he thought promised oil. Decades later he wound up a multimillionaire, selling his interest as a managing partner of the Texas Rangers baseball team for $15 million. He was elected to a second term as governor of Texas in 1998.
The son's credentials do not equal the father's. But George W. does not mention these differences when asked about his father. In fact, he rarely mentions him at all - even when asked about him in recent debates.
As the campaign drives on, George W. will be increasingly pressured to pass judgment on what some consider his father's failures: reneging on a promise not to raise taxes, leaving Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq, and sending US troops to Somalia.
His father has given him permission to do that, to say, ''Frankly, I think Dad was wrong on that.'' In a 1988 letter, the senior Bush encouraged his sons George and Jeb (the governor of Florida) to ''Chart your own course, not just on the issues but on defining yourselves. No one will ever question your love of family - your devotion to your parents.''
But chances are, George the Younger won't criticize his father, for he is the self-appointed ''loyalty enforcer,'' the one who protected him from self-interested advisers and over-inquiring reporters during the 1988 presidential campaign. In his recent book, ''A Charge to Keep,'' it is clear that George W. loves his father so much that it pains him to hear any criticism of him.
How the ambitious sons of powerful fathers achieve their desires has fascinated audiences since Socrates wrote about them. But the clue to the developing Bush drama lies in how well the son has learned at the hand of the father. Loyalty, President Bush taught his children, works as well in politics as it does in the family.
Even when Bush the Elder was thousands of miles away, he conveyed this message to them in long letters from Washington, China, and the White House. As head of the Republican National Committee during Watergate, he sympathized with his sons over the ridicule they might face from friends toward a father who was trying to build a party that was simultaneously imploding as President Nixon prepared to resign. He reminded them to appreciate the love in their family and to remember that ''we are a privileged people in a privileged country.''
Although George W. laughs at the suggestion that his father gives him political advice, he is shaped in his father's image. George W. followed his dad to Phillips Academy in Andover, and to Yale University. At the peak of the Vietnam War in 1968, while other graduates were fleeing to Canada, George W. joined the Texas Air National Guard and became a pilot, just like his father. He went into the energy business. In 1994, George W. fulfilled a dream his father once held of becoming governor of Texas.
Today, George W.'s ideas about the economy, the military, and society are nearly identical to his father's. Like his NAFTA-supporting father, George W. is a free trader. His vow never ''to get into a war we can't win'' echoes his father's mantra during the buildup to Desert Storm. And his pledge to ''cut taxes, so help me God,'' is simply an update of his father's 1988 presidential campaign promise, '' Read my lips, no new taxes.''
Even the Bushes' experience with primaries is becoming remarkably parallel. George W. won Iowa and lost New Hampshire, just like his dad did his first time around. In 1980, it was Reagan who won New Hampshire and later asked George Herbert Walker Bush to become his running mate. It is an idea that John McCain has already suggested to George W.
Susan E. Reed covered George Bush the Elder from 1986 to 1992 for CBS News. She is currently a freelance writer living in Cambridge.
