Will 'W' stand for 'winner?'

George W. Bush journeys out of Texas -- and his father's shadow -- into the limelight

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- George W. Bush has had a long run as the Republican front-runner -- he held the lead in Gallup polls as early as September 1997. While that early speculation swirled, Bush played it coy, focusing on Texas and making few comments on national issues. In a move some dubbed the "yellow rose garden" strategy, Bush stayed in Austin, letting the other candidates beat each other up in the earliest stages of the primary campaign.

On March 7, 1999, Bush announced the formation of an "exploratory committee," a means of wading into the campaign without declaring candidacy that has become popular in recent years. Those explorations quickly bore fruit -- by the end of March, the committee reported that it had raised $6 million.

By April, Bush was under pressure to start taking stands on national issues and his publicity naturally slipped when he did so. Elizabeth Dole, Bush's leading opponent, lost ground throughout the spring and summer, while Arizona Sen. John McCain pulled into second place. Meanwhile, Bush racked up a long list of endorsements from high-profile Republicans.

In June, Bush went on a tour of the early battleground states of Iowa and New Hampshire. He was the last of the presidential contenders to make an appearance in those states, and announced in Ames, Iowa, what everyone suspected -- he was running for president. In a hypothetical match-up with Al Gore, a scenario the polls have been examining for years, Bush was winning 56 percent to 40 percent.

Fund-raising frenzy

The fund-raising prowess of Bush's campaign brought pressure on candidates who lagged in the polls, such as Lamar Alexander, John Kasich and Dan Quayle. In June, still several months before the first primary, those campaigns were struggling to remain afloat. As one Bush fund-raiser put it, "We're sucking the oxygen right out of the air." In the first half of 1999, the Bush campaign raised $36 million, a third of it from Texas.

In July, Bush announced that he would forego $16.5 million in federal matching funds, a move which freed him from restrictions on spending in the primaries. He had his eye on Steve Forbes, who was financing his own campaign and thus exempt from spending limits, and remembering Bob Dole, whose 1996 campaign was strapped for cash between the primaries and the convention.

In the first major test of the campaign, the non-binding Iowa Straw Poll, Bush scored his first victory, with 31 percent of the vote. Forbes was second with 21 percent and Dole third with 14 percent. McCain finished near the back of the 12-candidate pack, with a mere 83 votes, less than 1 percent of the total. The Forbes campaign, citing the fact that more than two thirds of the party faithful voted against Bush, hailed the result as a victory.

Throughout the summer, Bush was dogged by rumors of drug use -- cocaine use, in particular -- in his younger years. He said he had not used drugs in the last 25 years, but refused to answer questions about the time before that, saying simply that he had once been "young and irresponsible." He also faced nagging questions about his qualifications for the office, and his level of gravitas, an SAT vocabulary word for seriousness.

By October, the Bush campaign's coffers had reached $56 million -- compared to $30 million raised by the 1996 Dole campaign during the entire primary season. That same month, Pat Buchanan, lagging far back in the Republican pack in the polls, announced that he would end his third attempt at the Republican nomination and move to the Reform Party.

'Pop quiz'

In November, one year nearly to the day before the election, a Boston reporter grilled Bush on the world's hot spots, asking him to name the leaders of Chechnya, Taiwan, India and Pakistan. Bush referred to Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan's president, as "Lee," but could not name the others. Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post's media critic, found no reporters in his informal survey who could name all four. Even Bill Clinton downplayed the importance of the quiz, saying, "The most important thing is do you have a clear idea of what the world should look like and what America's policies ought to be in those areas?"

Late in the year, Bush sat out two debates in New Hampshire and one in Arizona, citing scheduling conflicts. December saw the first face-to-face meeting of six Republican rivals, including Bush, in a campaign that had been in progress for months.

By mid-December, CNN/TIME polls showed McCain had passed Forbes and Dole, and even Bush -- he led by four points in New Hampshire and three in Arizona, both within the poll's margin of error. Like the Democrats, the GOP campaign was beginning to look like a real race.

At a January debate in New Hampshire, the new dynamic of the race was clear -- the fireworks were between Bush and McCain, with Steve Forbes, Orrin Hatch, Alan Keyes and Gary Bauer fading into the background.

Bush won the Iowa caucuses with 41 percent of the vote, ahead of Forbes (31 percent) and Keyes (14 percent). McCain wrote off Iowa, campaigning in New Hampshire instead, and got only 5 percent of the vote there. The focus paid off, as McCain won by a 16-point margin in New Hampshire. In states like New Hampshire that have "open primaries" -- where voters are not restricted by party registration -- McCain drew substantial support from Democrats and independents who "crossed over" to vote in the GOP primary.

Momentum swings, and swings back

The momentum shifted back to Bush in South Carolina, when he won with a convincing 51 percent of the vote to McCain's 25 percent. That marked the end of McCain as a realistic contender for the nomination -- or, at least that was the conventional wisdom. Eric Pooley, TIME's chief political correspondent, said that "at this point, a McCain candidacy becomes almost inconceivable."

While campaigning in South Carolina, Bush gave a speech at Bob Jones University in an effort to bolster his conservative credentials -- at one point in his speech, he used the word "conservative" six times in half a minute. It was the largest crowd of the campaign so far, a mandatory event for some 7,000 students, faculty and staff of the school. But over the years, BJU had banned interracial dating and the school's president had made strongly anti-Catholic remarks. After the BJU appearance became a stump issue for McCain and the Democrats, Bush sent a letter of apology to John Cardinal O'Connor, the Archbishop of New York and a national Catholic leader.

On February 22, McCain rebounded from his disappointment in South Carolina to win 50 percent of the vote in Michigan and 60 percent in his home state of Arizona. In the Michigan primary, by some estimates, only 49 percent of the Republican primary voters were registered Republicans, the rest Democrats and independents. The Republicans voted overwhelmingly for Bush, the Democrats and independents overwhelmingly for McCain.

At the end of the month, Bush swept another multi-state primary, winning the Virginia and Washington primaries, and the North Dakota caucuses. The race was still competitive coming into Super Tuesday, when 16 states and American Samoa -- in all, one third of the electorate -- voted on the same day. It was indeed super for Bush, who took most of the states, including the big prizes of New York and California. McCain took a block of New England states, including Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, all with few delegates. Two days after Super Tuesday, McCain announced he was "suspending" his campaign. He did not immediately endorse Bush.

After Super Tuesday, with both parties' nominees all but set, the race became focused on November. Bush maintained a lead in most polls, but the lead waxed and waned throughout the spring and summer. Both candidates competed for the banner of "reformer" and for the attention of McCain's supporters while jockeying for the political center. Bush's support for the death penalty became an issue, as executions continued in Texas throughout the year, and he asserted his confidence that every one of the 130-plus people executed during his tenure as governor was guilty.

Bush spent part of June and July mulling over his choice of running mate before settling on the man he picked to lead the search -- Dick Cheney, who served as defense secretary during the Bush administration. There was some controversy over Cheney's record as a congressman during the Reagan administration -- including a vote against a resolution to encourage the freeing of South African then-dissident Nelson Mandela -- but not much stuck to the ticket.

In July, Bush took the unusual (for a Republican) step of addressing the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His 15-minute speech was politely received by the audience of 3,000, but neither the NAACP nor the Bush campaign expected Bush to claim many votes among NAACP members. Just before the convention, the Republicans also held a reception to honor Teamsters president James P. Hoffa, treading into the traditionally Democratic stronghold of organized labor.

When Republicans gathered to hammer out the party platform, Bush's supporters were solidly in control, and avoided the messy public disputes over such issues as abortion that have hounded past campaigns. The convention itself was also a marked departure from GOP spectacles of the past, with a distinct emphasis on diversity. Outside the convention, Bush courted Latino voters in Philadelphia with the help of his half-Mexican nephew, George P. Bush. Inside the hall, the program prominently featured African-American speakers, including former Joint Chiefs chairman Colin Powell, Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts and international policy wonk Condoleezza Rice.

The greatest departure from the largely conciliatory tone of the convention was Cheney's acceptance speech, in which he said, "We're all a little weary of the Clinton-Gore routine" and promised to "restore decency and integrity to the Oval Office." Bush, in his speech the following night, maintained his theme of "compassionate conservatism," and cited his working relationship with late Texas Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, a Democrat who endorsed Gov. Bush's re-election bid. Rather than emphasizing ideological differences, Bush said the Clinton administration had squandered eight years of opportunities. "They had their chance," Bush said. "They have not led. We will."

While Gore faced questions of exaggerations and misstatements, Bush continued to be dogged by a series of verbal flubs.

After the Democratic convention, Bush saw his lead in the polls evaporate as Gore got a strong post-convention "bounce." The debate over the debates grew heated, with the Bush camp pushing for talk show-style appearances on one TV network, and Gore's campaign insisting on more formal debates on multiple networks. The campaigns ultimately agreed on three 90-minute presidential debates -- one standing behind lecterns, one sitting at a table and one town meeting -- and one debate between the vice presidential candidates.

Another minor flap followed a Republican National Committee ad, in which the word "RATS" -- part of "bureaucrats" -- flashes briefly on the screen during a description of the Gore health care plan. The Gore campaign blasted the ad as an effort at subliminal advertising. The RNC and Bush campaign denied that the ads were, as Bush said in another verbal flub, "subliminable."

After Gore put in an appearance on "Oprah," Bush did the same, and appeared confident and comfortable. In the debates, he sometimes seemed to lack Gore's depth on the issues, but was at ease. The debates were close, with many opinion polls showing Gore as the winner; but throughout, Bush's numbers in the polls continued to rise until, by late October, he had a solid lead of 50 percent to 41 percent.

The 2000 race is, according to many observers, the closest since 1960, when Kennedy won by 0.2 percent of the popular vote. While Bush held a slight edge two weeks before the election, the lead had changed several times during the course of the race; it was a dead heat a little over two weeks earlier, and an eight-point Gore lead a couple of weeks before that. What will happen on November 7? Find out November 8.

-- Written by Andy Walton, CNN.com