Once More, With Feeling
As he accepts the nomination for a second term, President Bush tries to convince a nation he's the right man for the job
Chambers's text for this Thursday, when Bush accepts the Republican presidential nomination, calls for surrender of the individual to the Almighty. "Our spiritual life cannot be measured by success as the world measures it," Chambers wrote, "but only by what God pours through us--and we cannot measure that at all. . . . Our Lord is filled with overflowing joy whenever he sees any of us doing what Mary [of Bethany] did--not being bound by a particular set of rules but being totally surrendered to him."
Between now and November, Bush will try to walk the line between strength and stubbornness. "People believe he sticks to his principles," says a senior adviser. "The question will be, Who do you trust more to be a strong leader, to have the resolve to stay the course at a difficult time?" There is, of course, a flip side to that equation. "Bush's Achilles heel turns out to be that he's too rigid," says Democratic pollster Mark Penn, and this concerns many voters. They have two more months to figure out which side of George W. Bush would be most prominent in a second term.
With Kevin Whitelaw, Julian E. Barnes, James M. Pethokoukis and Thomas Omestad
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