Why Didn't We Get Governor Bush?

Now that Karl Rove is leaving the West Wing, marking the last of the Texans who surrounded the president in his inner circle, it's worth asking a fundamental question? Why didn't we get the Bush who was governor of Texas, popular with Democrats, winning almost half the Hispanic vote, bipartisan? This is a question that's perplexed me and I asked one of those Texans about it this Spring. He (and I'm using the masculine not to attribute gender) attributed it to the Florida recount, saying that the interim between election day 2000 and the Supreme Court's decision had hardened Bush--and Democrats--in ways that were unimagineable before the close count in Florida. I suppose that makes some sense. As much as Democrats believe the 2000 election was stolen, Bush saw it as his legitimately by 537 votes followed by a Democratic effort to undo the count. But that doesn't entirely explain it. Part of it is surely that Democrats are to the left of Bush in Congress so while it was famously easy for Bush to get along with Bob Bullock in Texas, it wasn't as easy to court Tom Daschle or Dick Gephardt. But still, I think it really fell apart with the 2002 election. In 2001, Bush passed his tax cuts and No Child Left Behind, now widely reviled but then considered a signal bipartisan accomplishment. By 2002, when Bush was pounding the Democrats as soft on terror, using a dispute over union work rules in the formation of the new Department of Homeland Security as a cudgel, I think it was all over. Once Democrats who had supported Bush in the weeks following 9/11 were labeled as weak on terror, it was really all over. You can't help but wonder how different it would be if Bush had gone another way.