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By John Maggs and Kirk Victor, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Aug. 3, 2000

Tonight, in ways that he could hardly have imagined a few years ago, George W. Bush will stand alone. Bush is a familiar face to many Americans, but never before has he faced an audience so large and so intent on measuring whether he is up to the job of serving as President of the United States.

His running mate, Dick Cheney, set the stage for Bush's address last night with his own speech to the delegates and a national television audience. Borrowing a phrase that Al Gore used repeatedly in 1992 to campaign against the Administration of Bush's father, Cheney led delegates in a boisterous chant: "It's time for them to go."

A few hours before, Bush had taken part in the traditional nominee walk-through and stepped up to the wooden lectern on the stage where he will speak to the American people tonight. The convention hall was almost empty.

Bush arrived in Philadelphia to the music of a fife-and-drum corps dressed in colonial garb. Looking on was Lon Kugler, an alternate delegate from Colorado who had been bused to the ceremony. Brushing aside any policy differences he had with the Texas governor, Kugler gave a familiar answer to why Bush is the right man right now for Republicans: "I'm tired of losing."

Cheney tried to do his part last night by promising, "big changes are coming to Washington." George W. Bush, he said, "doesn't accept old lines of argument and division" but instead "brings people together." Cheney repeatedly blasted Gore and President Clinton -- a sharp contrast to the previous two convention nights, in which the tone had been far more subdued and positive.

Echoing the themes that Bush has stressed on the campaign trail, Cheney said that Washington features politics that "has become war by other means," "an endless onslaught of accusation," "a constant setting of groups, one against the other."

In a preview of the campaigning to come, Cheney said that Gore and Clinton are inextricably linked, no matter what Gore does to try to separate himself.

"As the man from Hope goes home to New York... Mr. Gore tries to separate himself from his leader's shadow. But somehow, we will never see one without thinking of the other."

"Does anyone... Republican or Democrat," Cheney continued, "seriously believe that under Mr. Gore, the next four years would be any different than the last eight?"

Tonight, it's Bush's turn.

Ted Sorensen, who wrote John F. Kennedy's nomination acceptance speech in 1960, said Bush's task reminds him of Kennedy's then: overcoming the doubts of voters not particularly familiar with the nominee. In Kennedy's case, the doubts were over whether he was too young to be President, and whether the country was ready for a Catholic in the White House.

Most important, said Sorensen, Bush needs to present an honest picture of himself. "Up to now, people are really not focused on the campaign. But now the focus is intense, and you can't offer a false image of yourself. People will see through it."

With his six years in office as governor of Texas, Bush has the least political experience of any presidential nominee since Dwight D. Eisenhower. And as with Ike, the Republican Party beat a path to Bush's door. Most presidential nominees are consumed by the ambition to be President. But as recently as 1997, George W. Bush was telling friends that he wasn't sure he wanted to be President.

Tonight, he needs to not only convince Americans that he wants to be President, but show them why they should elect him.

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