Evans bucked up the fundraisers.
I called Policy Director Josh Bolten, who was with the majority of our staff back at campaign headquarters in Austin. “How is everyone holding up?” I asked.
“Most people are in shock,” he admitted.
I knew the team would be looking to me for a signal. “Get them together and tell them they ought to hold their heads high because we’re going to win this thing,” I told Josh.
Looking back on it, the loss in New Hampshire created an opportunity. Voters like to gauge how a candidate responds to adversity. Reagan and Dad showed their resilience after losing Iowa in 1980 and 1988, respectively. Bill Clinton turned his campaign around after defeat in New Hampshire in 1992, as did Barack Obama in 2008. In 2000, I looked at the defeat as a chance to prove I could take a blow and come back. The lesson is that sometimes the best personnel moves are the ones you don’t make.
In South Carolina, we picked a new theme to highlight my bipartisan accomplishments in Texas: Reformer with Results. We set up town hall events, where I fielded questions until the audience ran out of things to ask. I worked the phones, enlisting the support of leaders across the state. Then McCain ran an ad questioning my character by comparing me to Bill Clinton. That crossed a line. I went on the air to counterpunch. The response, combined with a well-organized grassroots campaign, paid off. I won South Carolina with 53 percent of the vote, took nine of thirteen primaries on Super Tuesday, and rode the momentum to the nomination.
In early May, John and I met for an hour and a half in Pittsburgh. He was justifiably upset about insulting language some of my supporters had used in South Carolina. I understood his anger and made clear I respected his character. After our meeting, he told reporters I could restore integrity to the White House “more than adequately.”
That wasn’t the most scintillating endorsement I’ve ever received, but it was the beginning of reconciliation between John and me. In August, John and his wife, Cindy, hosted us at their beautiful ranch in Sedona, Arizona. It was fun to see Chef McCain behind the grill, relaxed and barbecuing ribs. We campaigned together in 2000 and again in 2004. I respect John, and I was glad to have him at my side.
Al Gore was a talented man and an accomplished politician. Like me, he had graduated from an Ivy League school and had a father in politics. But our personalities seemed pretty different. He appeared stiff, serious, and aloof. It looked like he had been running for president his entire life. He brought together a formidable coalition of big-government liberals, cultural elites, and labor unions. He was plenty capable of engaging in class-warfare populism. He was also vice president during an economic boom. He would be tough to beat.
When I look back on the 2000 campaign, most of it collapses into a blur of handshaking, fundraising, and jousting for the morning headlines. There were two moments when the political merry-go-round stopped. The first came at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, which was managed well by Dad’s former deputy chief of staff and transportation secretary, Andy Card.
I had attended every convention since 1976, but nothing compared to the feeling when I took center stage. I waited backstage in the dark, listening for the countdown: “Five, four, three, two, one.” Then out into the packed arena. At first the scene was disorienting. Light and sound exploded all around me. I could feel the body heat and smell the people. Then the faces came into focus. I saw Laura and the girls, Mother and Dad. All my life, I had been watching George Bush speak. I was struck by the reversal of roles.
“Our opportunities are too great, our lives too short to waste this moment,” I said. “So tonight, we vow to our nation we will seize this moment of American promise. We will use these good times for great goals. … This administration had its moment, they had their chance. They have not led. We will.”
Two months later the campaigns paused again, this time for the debates. Karen Hughes oversaw my preparation team, with Josh Bolten taking the lead on policy. Josh combines a brilliant mind, disarming modesty, and a buoyant spirit. I’ll never forget standing at the Ames, Iowa, straw poll in August 1999 watching several hundred motorcycles barrel into town. Among the riders were Governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin and Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado. When the lead man hopped down from his shiny blue-and-chrome Iowa-made Victory bike and pulled off his helmet, I was stunned to see Josh, clad in a bandana with our campaign logo. “Governor,” he said, “meet the Bikers for Bush.”
The first debate was in Boston. In the holding room backstage, I called Kirbyjon Caldwell, and we prayed over the phone. Kirbyjon asked the Almighty to give me strength and wisdom. His voice gave me such comfort and calm that I made the telephone prayer with Kirbyjon a tradition before major events for the rest of the campaign and during my presidency.
The next voice I heard was that of the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, introducing the candidates. We emerged from our respective corners and met at center stage. Gore deployed the ultra-firm handshake. I suspected he was trying to play a head game, just like Ann Richards had in 1994.
I concentrated on answering the questions, although at times I felt like I was on autopilot. By the time I glanced at my watch—which I had taken off and placed on the lectern to avoid repeating a debate mistake Dad had once made—we were almost done. We gave our closing statements, shook hands again—normal grip this time—and participated in the post-debate stage rush of family, friends, and aides.
Immediately afterward, Karen told me Gore had made a big mistake. He had repeatedly sighed and grimaced while I was talking. That was news to me. I had been so focused on my performance that I had not noticed.
The second and third debates had different formats but similar results. Neither of us made any quotable gaffes. There was one interesting moment in the third debate, at Washington University in St. Louis. The town hall format gave us the freedom to roam the stage. The first question was about the Patients’ Bill of Rights. I was giving my answer when I saw Gore heading toward me. He is a big man, and his presence filled my space quickly. Was the vice president about to deliver a chest bump? A forearm shiver? For a split second I thought I was back on the playground at Sam Houston Elementary. I gave him a look of amused disdain and moved on.
I felt good about the debates. I believed my performance had exceeded expectations, and I figured the dramatic moments of the campaign were behind me. I was wrong.
Five days before the election, at a routine campaign stop in Wisconsin, Karen Hughes pulled me aside. We walked into a quiet room and she said, “A reporter in New Hampshire called to ask about the DUI.” My heart sank. Such negative news at the end of a campaign would be explosive.
I had seriously considered disclosing the DUI four years earlier, when I was called for jury duty. The case happened to involve drunk driving. I was excused from the jury because, as governor, I might later have to rule on the defendant’s case as a part of the pardon process. As I walked out of the Austin courthouse, a reporter shouted, “Have you ever been arrested for DUI?” I answered, “I do not have a perfect record as a youth. When I was young, I did a lot of foolish things. But I will tell you this, I urge people not to drink and drive.”
Politically, it would not have been a problem to reveal the DUI that day. The next election was two years away, and I had quit drinking. I decided not to raise the DUI for one reason: my girls. Barbara and Jenna would start driving soon. I worried that disclosing my DUI would undermine the stern lectures I had been giving them about drinking and driving. I didn’t want them to say, “Daddy did it and he turned out okay, so we can, too.”
Laura was traveling with me the day the press uncovered the DUI. She called Barbara and Jenna to tell them before they heard it on TV. Then I went out to the cameras and made a statement: “I was pulled over. I admitted to the policeman that I had been drinking. I paid a fine. And I regret that it happened. But it did. I’ve learned my lesson.”
Not disclosing the DUI on my terms may have been the single costliest political mistake I ever made. Karl later estimated that more than two million people, including many social conservatives, either stayed home or changed their votes. They had been hoping for a different kind of president, somebody who would set an example of personal responsibility.
If I had it to do over, I would have come clean about the DUI that day at the courthouse. I would have explained my mistake to the girls, and held an event with Mothers Against Drunk Driving to issue a strong warning not to drink and drive. All those thoughts ran through my head as I went to bed that night in Wisconsin. So did one more: I may have just cost myself the presidency.
Five days later, the four-point lead I’d held before the DUI revelation evaporated. I campaigned frantically through the final week and went into election day in a dead heat with Gore. That night, our extended family
