Word: austine
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...Bush operatives could be forgiven for ignoring their own warnings that this was destined to be a close race. All through the giddy spring and summer of the Bush ascendancy, they swapped poll results like Pokemon cards. On the walls of the brown campaign cubicles at Austin headquarters were huge national maps with a wide Bush blanket of blue covering the states in which he was up. A few specks of yellow marked the toss-ups, and the Gore strongholds in red were so small they looked like squashed bugs. The heady numbers were such a point of pride...
...were gonna walk away with this thing," sighs a top adviser to the Texas Governor. "Even we started believing it." Last week there was no shortage of Republican operatives who said they had seen trouble coming for weeks, even months, but none of the cocky co-pilots in Austin would listen. Some image advisers inside the campaign and back in Washington at Republican headquarters had said for weeks the Bush campaign had to start ripping into Gore. The ads were in the can. It was time...
...editorial pages, this was not a life-and-death issue for average voters, and if they were paying attention, it was probably to decide that they smelled fear in the Bush camp. Given the Vice President's famous appetite for debates, the attack ad didn't ring true. (The Austin team never tested that spot in a focus group, a fact that some campaign officials now regret.) "I'm not sure why we went there," says an adviser, and by week's end, Bush had backed off, agreeing to negotiate with Gore over the Commission debates. Another aide is blunter...
Republicans outside Austin are complaining that Bush is too deep in the weeds of his own operation; a major vendor says Bush okays every piece of direct mail himself. "I thought Al Gore was the one who was writing all the bumper-sticker slogans," said a disgruntled G.O.P. operative, "but it turns out to be W." The narrow funnel to the top slows everything down and suggests the principal has no confidence in his troops--a bad signal to send everyone else...
...already happening. On Memorial Day weekend, Austin, Texas, drew 500 people to its third Burning Flipside; San Francisco has a single-night party every month; and there was a burn under a bridge in New York City earlier this year. Now Harvey is talking to people in Japan and Europe who are intent on organizing their own festivals. "I'd like to change the f______ world, and I think we've got a good shot at it," he says as a beautiful woman in a tight shirt who calls herself Zen Paradise places an ashtray at his knees. Frederick...