The Patience of Jeb

He hired driven, policy-oriented aides, usually under 40 years old, to better endure his round-the-clock demands. Bush can be a head-banging micromanager.

At an open house at the governor's mansion after his inauguration, Bush instructed a young aide on where to stand to insure that the receiving line moved efficiently.

"He has 19 hands on both arms and is involved in every phase of what everyone is doing," says Tom Slade, the former chairman of the Florida Republican Party.

"Jeb once made the comment that he loved vacationing in Kennebunkport in the summertime," says Feeney. "You know what his reason was? Because it's the place in the country where the sun comes up first. So when it's 5:30, when he's on his e-mail talking to his staff down in Florida, he can watch the sun come up."

He questions relentlessly and disputes small points. "He seems to know exactly what you don't want him to ask you," says Mac Stipanovich, a Tallahassee lobbyist and longtime associate. He'll bring up an obscure similar proposal that failed three years earlier in another state.

"If you think all you have to do is walk in there and slap him on the back, he'll eat your lunch."

His staff, while loyal, tends to turn over quickly. He can be excruciating to negotiate with. "He absolutely will not compromise until he is backed into a corner," says Tom Rossin, a former Democratic leader in the Florida Senate. "You have a sense that he [Jeb] needs to prove something, that he has a chip on his shoulder."

But Bush has a stubbornness that can seem born of a righteous crusade. In his inaugural address, he fantasizes about the government buildings of Tallahassee becoming "empty of workers." The buildings, he says, would become "silent monuments to a time when government played a larger role than it deserved."

Bush is bored with incremental progress. The Florida constitution mandates that this must be his last term. He is a man in a terrific hurry.

At the Inaugural Ball, there is a running slide show that plays over the $100-a-ticket "black tie and blue jeans gala." The slides reveal the governor in a series of leaderly settings -- looking stern at a meeting, laughing amid a cluster of racially diverse children.

But the slide that draws the most notice is one of Bush collapsed over his laptop. He is asleep, or pretending to be. It suits the recurring message: Governor Bush is chronically logged on.

In Sickness and in Health

Columba Bush was on Capitol Hill recently in her role as spokeswoman for the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. She is 5 feet 2, has perfect red lipstick and, battling a cold, is trailed by the faint essence of Hall's cherry lozenges. She is listening to Joseph A. Califano, the former secretary of health, education and welfare, who is addressing a news conference in the Russell Senate Office Building. Columba Bush, who will speak next, sits perfectly still.

Califano is listing factors that make young women susceptible to drug and alcohol abuse. He mentions high-stress environments, big life transitions. Parents need to be closely involved with their children, he says. They need to be attuned to warning signs.

Columba Bush walks slowly to the lectern when she is introduced. She reads in thickly accented English, appearing uneasy. She never looks up and doesn't mention Noelle.

After she speaks, a reporter asks if her daughter's plight has been exacerbated by being part of a political family. "Absolutely," she says, starting to elaborate, then stopping.

She has rarely spoken to the press since June 1999, when she was fined by U.S. customs agents for not declaring $19,000 in clothes and jewelry she bought in Paris. "I did not ask to join a famous family," she said at the time while apologizing. "I simply wanted to marry the man I loved."

Bush considered not running for a second term last year after Noelle was caught trying to buy Xanax with a fake prescription. It was discussed seriously for a few months within his family, sources close to both Jeb and Columba Bush say. But that was ruled out, largely because Jeb was so attached to his job.