-Caveat Lector-
"Bush's policy team, now numbering more than 100 conservative thinkers,
can trace its creation to a small April 1998 gathering at the Palo Alto,
Calif., home of former Secretary of State [and Bohemian Grove notable] George
Shultz.
"Shultz assembled fellows from Stanford University's Hoover Institution
...Bush is leaning heavily on the Hoover think tank. Shultz, a Hoover
distinguished fellow, was on Bush's presidential exploratory committee ...
Hoover fellow Condoleeza Rice, national security adviser to President Bush,
heads a foreign policy and defense team that includes Dick Cheney, a former
White House chief of staff and defense secretary, and Paul Wolfowitz,
President Bush's undersecretary of defense for policy.
"Leading the economic team is Lawrence Lindsey, a former Federal Reserve
governor and American Enterprise Institute scholar ..."
Bush Circle of Advisers Diverse
By MICHAEL HOLMES
.c The Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - When Republican presidential front-runner George W. Bush
needs advice these days, he turns to a circle of political professionals,
policy wonks and fellow politicians.
Some have been with him from the start. Others have come aboard within the
past year.
Mixing public, private and academic experience, they generally are more
conservative than the team assembled by Bush's father, analysts say. But
being the son of a former president certainly helps recruiting.
``For Bush, it's not difficult to pull together a group because, of course,
he's been around Republican and conservative intellectual circles for a long
time,'' said Norman Ornstein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute.
``I think he wants to make a statement that his presidency will be a little
bit more like Ronald Reagan's than George Bush's - that he's more
conservative,'' Ornstein said.
The Pros
Closest to Bush are a trio of advisers who have worked together since Bush's
first gubernatorial campaign in 1994: strategist Karl Rove, spokeswoman Karen
Hughes and campaign manager Joe Allbaugh.
Rove, a friend of George Bush's 1988 campaign manager, Lee Atwater, is a
longtime political consultant and a major reason the GOP dominates Texas
elections right now.
After going for more than 100 years without electing a Texas governor,
Republicans today hold all 29 statewide elected offices. Many of the
campaigns were masterminded by Rove.
He orchestrated the highly visible pilgrimages that national Republican
figures made to Austin this year, as Bush was staying home to consider
running for president.
When Bush asked him to sell the consulting company he founded two decades ago
to concentrate on helping him win the White House, Rove did. ``He's been my
friend for 25 years,'' Rove explained. ``I'd want to be able to put my heart
and soul into it.''
Ms. Hughes is another member of the so-called Iron Triangle, although she
says she's in the dark about the origin of the nickname the news media hung
on Bush's closest advisers.
A former Fort Worth television reporter, Ms. Hughes moved from covering
politics to playing the game. Texas press coordinator for Reagan-Bush in
1984, she later became executive director of the Texas GOP and joined Bush in
the early months of the 1994 race. She's spoken for him ever since.
Allbaugh is a big presence in the campaign's day-to-day workings. An Oklahoma
native and campaign veteran, Allbaugh quickly earned a reputation among
staffers in Bush's first campaign as the guy who said ``no'' to spending
requests. He served as Bush's executive assistant - with an office only steps
away from the governor's - until the Texas Legislature ended its 1999
session.
The three helped Bush oust popular Democratic Gov. Ann Richards in 1994 and
get nearly 70 percent of the vote in his 1998 re-election.
``The good campaign teams are the ones that emerge in the heat of battle.
They did that in 1994. I have a lot of respect for them,'' said Chuck
McDonald, spokesman for Richards' last campaign. ``They are very good at
getting on their message and staying on their message.''
The Policy Wonks
In many ways Bush's policy team, now numbering more than 100 conservative
thinkers, can trace its creation to a small April 1998 gathering at the Palo
Alto, Calif., home of former Secretary of State George Shultz.
Shultz assembled fellows from Stanford University's Hoover Institution to
meet with Bush. Those who attended say they came away impressed.
``We covered the landscape, from foreign policy and national security to tax
policy and Social Security reform,'' says Bush adviser John Cogan, an
economist and senior fellow at the institution. ``What amazed me and
surprised me was how often the governor would ask a series of follow-up
questions, probing into your idea.''
Bush is leaning heavily on the Hoover think tank. Shultz, a Hoover
distinguished fellow, was on Bush's presidential exploratory committee. Cogan
and Hoover fellows Martin Anderson and Michael Boskin are giving economics
and tax advice.
Former Stanford provost and Hoover fellow Condoleeza Rice, a national
security adviser to President Bush, heads a foreign policy and defense team
that includes Dick Cheney, a former White House chief of staff and defense
secretary, and Paul Wolfowitz, a former ambassador to Indonesia and President
Bush's undersecretary of defense for policy.
Leading the economic team is Lawrence Lindsey, a former Federal Reserve
governor and American Enterprise Institute scholar who says he had planned to
stay nonaligned in this year's presidential race.
``I knew most of the other Republican candidates. I had never met Governor
Bush,'' Lindsey said. But after a meeting set up by Al Hubbard, a Harvard
Business School classmate of Bush and former aide to Dan Quayle, Lindsey
signed on.
``I would say most of the people (advising Bush) are conservative, but most
have served in or near government and in that sense have a pragmatic sense of
what's possible,'' Lindsey said.
``Whether you're looking at tax policy or national security or education or
you name the field, he has managed to draw in the best people in the country
who agree with him philosophically,'' Anderson says.
The Pols
Advice with a twist comes from Bush's fellow politicians - including several
Republican governors and Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, an advocate of
privatization and leader of Bush's domestic policy team.
``He has a set of principles he's used as governor of Texas, and he applies
those to whatever we're discussing,'' Goldsmith said. ``He's sometimes the
teacher and sometimes the student. He can take over these meetings and
interrogate the experts. He has lots of questions, and he doesn't let people
off the hook.''
Bush insiders point to three governors - John Engler of Michigan, Marc
Racicot of Montana and Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania - as having Bush's ear.
All three trace their ``family ties'' to the elder Bush's campaigns, all have
worked with the younger Bush as state chief executives, and all describe Bush
as appreciative of those who can get things done in a political arena.
``He knows they're seared by experience to be responsive to people. Their
judgment is rounded out by practical exposure, not just theoretical
analysis,'' Racicot said.
``As a governor, you bring a certain mindset to this job that's a little
different from the mindset at the national level,'' Ridge said. ``Having been
in Congress - and I say this with all respect - most of the time members of
the House and Senate aren't really concerned about how a program will work
back in the states.''
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