If President Bush's approval rating stays in the stratosphere, he will probably coast to re-election in 2004. Every incumbent president with approval ratings even approaching Bush's 70 percent-plus has won a second term without breaking a sweat. You can look it up.
But political strategists, like generals, are paid to anticipate worst-case scenarios. And hints of how Bush would hope to win a close election are surfacing. These clues are contained in the pattern of Bush's decisions over his first 16 months, particularly where he's broken from his conservative base. On the biggest questions, like taxes or energy, Bush has almost always sided with his core conservative supporters. But on secondary issues, he's shown himself willing to abandon conservative orthodoxy to appeal to precisely targeted groups, such as steel workers or farmers.
This isn't the behavior of a president trying to fundamentally realign the electorate by inspiring wholesale changes in the allegiance of …
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