Bush strategists hedge bets, prepare plans for Dean loss

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President Bush's political strategists, who have been "war-gaming" against Howard Dean for weeks, have begun to prepare for the growing possibility that Mr. Dean might not win the Democratic nomination.

Although Bush officials still regard the former Vermont governor as the likely nominee, the race has become tight in Iowa and New Hampshire. That has led them to spend more time on contingency plans for the emergence of an alternative to Mr. Dean.

Those alternatives include Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts; Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri; Wesley Clark, the retired general from Arkansas; and to a lesser extent, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. The Bush campaign is not devoting significant energy to preparing for the nomination of Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, or the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Pentecostal pastor from Harlem.

"Maybe some of us said it was going to be Dean -- I mean, everyone was crowning him king," acknowledged a Bush campaign official. "And now the exact same pundits are knocking the crown off.

"But we have been among the very few observers of this process to say, 'Look, it could still be anybody,'" the official said.

Dean spokesman Jay Carson insisted the Bush campaign "is obviously worried more about us, because they've been paying the most attention to us."

Until recently, it appeared Mr. Dean would crush rivals in both Iowa and New Hampshire, effectively all but sewing up the nomination by next week. But now Bush strategists say the fight might continue until March 2, when numerous states hold primaries on what is dubbed "Super Tuesday."

Not even the most ardent Bush supporters, however, are holding out much hope for their ultimate fantasy: a muddled Democratic primary struggle that extends through the spring and into the summer, ending in a contentious floor fight at the party's national convention in July.

Still, Bush strategists pointed out that every day the Democrats continue to slog it out is another day the president can postpone his entry into the political fray. It's a classic strategy for protecting an incumbent president, who ends up waging a sort-of stealth campaign by merely going through the motions of governing -- which is to say, looking presidential.