The M Factor - How modesty works for W.

The new Bush regime is aggressively modest. Gone is the "Blue Goose," the huge royal podium. Gone are the strains of "Hail to the Chief," and the ruffles and flourishes. Bush moves around without a large retinue. He defers to the people he meets. His mark, as the columnist Marjorie Williams has said, is "flamboyant humility." This is Bush's key to defusing the anger of Democrats, like starving a fire of air. Showing humility-being civil, polite, unassuming, non-threatening, unobtrusive, attentive to law, and respectful of others-has made George W. Bush what he is at the moment: the most powerful man in the world.

From 1994, when he took on Ann Richards, through 2000, when he took on Al Gore, into 2001, when he played off an imploding Bill Clinton, Bush has risen and thrived by opposing people who tried to be oversized, and goading them into new heights of folly and arrogance. Life-sized, he sometimes attempts to be smaller. Canny, he sometimes plays dumb. Al Gore and Bill Clinton tried to know and do everything; Bush accepts his own limits. Clinton and Gore claimed credit for everything, to the point of self-parody; Bush happily ladles it out. Clinton and Gore tried to overwhelm others with what they saw as their virtues; Bush likes to let people be surprised, as they slowly discover his own. Clinton used public disasters as occasions to emote; Bush's reactions are more restrained. He chose not to exploit a recent school shooting. Said an aide, "He thinks it's inappropriate to make himself the bride at that wedding." Bush often chooses not to answer his critics, counting on their stridency to be counterproductive. As he turns his cheek to his enemies, their blows land on themselves. Humility so far has done very well by this president, giving him a rise in record time to the heights of power, giving new meaning to what the meek will inherit. Less is not only more; it can sometimes be everything. So it has been for George Bush.

Elected governor of Texas in 1990, Ann Richards had become a Star, a darling of the glitterati on the two coasts, a legend in her time and in her own mind. Fully aware of her rock-star status, she took Bush's run against her as an affront, calling him "clueless" and "Junior" and "Shrub." Trying to rattle him, she showed her contempt at all moments. By contrast, Bush stayed relentlessly civil, always addressing her as "Governor Richards." Asked about her attacks on himself and his family, he denied any ill will toward her: "I find her to be an interesting soul." In their debate, Richards tried to provoke him, to no avail. "She was so consumed with him, I knew that we had her," said Karl Rove later. At last, she blew up and called Bush a "jerk" at a rally. He won by seven points.

Unlike Ann Richards, Al Gore was no Star, but he too tried to be larger than life. He made himself into a super-aggressor, a comic-book hero, whom no mere human being could match. A large man, he attempted to make himself larger, bounding on stage, wearing tight shirts to show off his muscles, hiring an image guru to make him even more the Alpha Male. ("What has happened to the poor man's body?" asked the columnist Michael Kelly. "Someone needs to check the videotape on this, but I am pretty sure that Al Gore did not used to have a 23-inch neck.") A relentless aggression informed Gore's campaign; he used the word "fight" constantly. Like Richards, he tried to unnerve Bush in debate, interrupting him, mugging, and noisily sighing and groaning. This did not distract Bush as much as it did viewers, who developed a dim view of Gore. Bush, meanwhile, was discreet and courteous. Given the closeness of the final electoral outcome-and the fact that Gore lost his lead while the debates were ongoing-Gore should regret not having been humble. If he had been, he might be president today.

In this way, Bush was helped by Richards and Gore. And then there was Bill. Bill Clinton, the soul of restraint and good judgment! Bill Clinton, that vacuum for attention and money. During Bush's convention, Clinton made eight political speeches, taking swipes both at Bush and his father, none of which much helped the Democrats. On the Thursday before Gore's convention, Clinton gave a long page-one confessional to an audience of ministers about his "moral growth." This did not make the Gore people happy. On the convention's first night, Clinton made his triumphal long stalk to the podium, where he was expected to launch his would-be successor. Instead, he heaped praise on himself. The same traits that led Clinton to upstage Gore's campaign and convention led him to try to preempt George Bush's inauguration, with a steady stream of farewell addresses, ending in the hour-long televised wallow at Andrews Air Force Base. Around this were many more displays of Clintonian arrogance and greed. Soon, the editors of the New York Times and other liberal Democrats were praising George Bush's approach to his office. As Ann Richards had done much to make him governor, and Al Gore had done much to make him president, Bill Clinton had done much to make him a legitimate president, blessed with a honeymoon, and facing a harassed, distracted opposition. Seldom has humility been so empowering. Seldom has restraint wrought so much.

The word "humility" may not seem to go well with such words as "Texas" and "president," but it can. A Texan, Bush is still a New England transplant, with layers and layers of ancestral reticence, and parents and grandparents who warned constantly against bragging. A religious man, he holds the belief of believers that God, and not man, shapes human endeavors. A conservative, he holds modest views about the role of the government and government power. A Republican with an activist agenda, he still has an anti-utopian mindset. He will take many small steps, not declare wars on poverty. He will use American power to serve American allies and interests, not to remake foreign governments.

Correctly, he has linked grandiose schemes to personal arrogance, as in his statement about Yale in the '60s, set down in that keen book First Son by Bill Minutaglio: "What angered me was the way such people . . . felt intellectually superior and so righteous. They thought they ...