A president on the trail

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- It's a stock line now, tossed out at just about every fund-raiser President Bush attends. And last week, as he mixed a little money-tree shaking with an appearance with the Golden State's new governor-elect, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bush offered it up again.

"The political season is going to come in its own time," Bush told Republican donors at the Riverside Convention Center. "I am kind of loosening up and getting ready. But I've got a job to do. I'm focused on the people's business, and there's a lot on the agenda in Washington, D. C."

No one doubts that Bush has a broad policy agenda in Washington. No one doubts that he's trying to get that agenda enacted into law.

But Bush is all but alone in refusing to acknowledge that "the political season" is well underway. And he's one of its biggest players.

So why has the president been so unwilling to admit the obvious?

Presidents want to convey a sense of being above mere political skirmishing. Bush is not the first chief executive to employ that strategy, and he won't be the last. Many wait until after the nominating convention to acknowledge what's been obvious all along -- they want to be re-elected and have been trying to woo voters.

"You start with the proposition that all presidents, for as long as they can, say this isn't about politics," said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, a policy think tank in Washington. "It's absolutely standard procedure for them. The more you can run as the anti-politician, the better off you are."

When Bush flew to Lexington, Ky., on Oct. 9, he went simply to help a fellow Republican, Representative Ernie Fletcher, win his race for governor. But Bush refused to cast his trip in purely political terms. "For me, politics will come in time," Bush said that night. "I've got a job to do, and it's my honor to lead this country."

Count Senator John F. Kerry among those who don't buy the apolitical stand. Kerry, one of the nine Democrats trying to take Bush's job, says Campaign 2000 never stopped. He said the president's visit to New Hampshire before the Kentucky event showed "that even they understand that 3.2 million jobs lost means that they can't hide in the Rose Garden."

In any case, Bush's non-campaigning is working with Republican donors. Bush has been bracketing official events with campaign stops for months now, swooping into town on Air Force One, wowing the locals, and leaving with a pile of money.

Since this spring, when his campaign started accepting donations "to lay the groundwork" for his reelection effort -- which will start at some unspecified point in the future -- Bush has collected more than $85 million, far more than any of the Democrats.

Even with that massive haul, a campaign spokesman, Kevin Madden, said Bush "is not focused on politics. He's focused more on his policy agenda."

Hess has heard that all before. Jimmy Carter, running for reelection in 1980, tried to use a similar strategy to beat back a primary challenge from Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

Carter "had a Rose Garden strategy," Hess said. "He stayed home and was presidential. Poor Teddy Kennedy had to go campaign for the nomination, so he was a politician."

Carter won the nomination, but it didn't do him much good against Ronald Reagan.

So when will Bush acknowledge that much of his speeches and travel these days are aimed at convincing voters to give him another term?

"There's no predetermined date for that," Madden said.