Frontline "The Choice 2004"

An award-winning election-year tradition returns with "The Choice 2004," a comprehensive FRONTLINE biography studying the character, experience and worldviews of incumbent George W. Bush and challenger John F. Kerry.

"This is the single most important presidential election in my lifetime," Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.) tells FRONTLINE. "America's role in the world is up for grabs here. And whomever gets elected president, what actions they put into play over the next four years are going to set the predicate for what the next two or three presidents have to deal with. They will not be able to be turned around." Karen Hughes, adviser to President Bush, agrees: "There has never been a presidential election in my lifetime where the stakes were higher or the choice was clearer."

Culled from more than 50 interviews with the candidates' families, friends, colleagues and political adversaries, "The Choice 2004" illuminates defining moments of the candidates' lives with rarely seen archival footage. Produced by veteran FRONTLINE producer Martin Smith and reported by Nicholas Lemann, author, political correspondent to The New Yorker and dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, "The Choice 2004" airs on PBS Tuesday, October 12, 2004. The film, part of PBS' "By the People" election coverage, will be rebroadcast Thursday, October 14, and Monday, November 1.

"This film is about two men, two worldviews and two Americas that have all developed in tandem," says Lemann. "It is as much about the country as it is about the candidates."

In 2004, America faces its first wartime election since Vietnam. Like Vietnam, the war in Iraq has exposed deep divisions in how Americans see this country and its place in the world and has helped to define the differences between the candidates. Senator Kerry's outlook on the war - which he voted for and later voted against further funding - has its caveats. President Bush is certain that his preemptive war on Iraq was the right thing to do, even without the kind of coalition his father built in the first Gulf War. These differences of opinion speak to what may prove the most fundamental difference between these two men: the difference between certainty and nuance.

"Kerry portrays Bush's worldview as dangerously simplistic. Bush portrays Kerry's as dangerously unresolved," says producer Martin Smith. "Ultimately, 'The Choice 2004' aims to provide viewers a window into each man's defining moments and the consequences of the choices they themselves have made."

"John Kerry is one of the few people I've run into in my lifetime who's actually prepared to be president of the United States," says Jack Blum, former senior investigator and special counsel for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "He has the depth of understanding: the knowledge of the way the world works, the knowledge of the way government works, and the knowledge of the history of how we got to where we are today." But even Kerry's friends suggest that his depth of knowledge can get him into trouble, inviting charges of inconsistency.

Bill Codinha explains, "He's very nuanced. He likes to hear all the arguments because he wants to make sure he's right. He sees the hundred colors of gray that exist between white and black."

In contrast, those close to George Bush characterize the president as a man of great clarity. "He's got a keen sense of right and wrong," says David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter. "He's got a kind of perseverance, a tenacity, a kind of personal stubbornness that makes him take hold of something and not let it go." As lifelong friend, Clay Johnson, explains, "The president is not one to call up people in the middle of the night and ruminate about different options that exist."

Television evangelist James Robison suggests that when Bush decided to run for president he may have anticipated the great challenges America would soon face. Robison tells FRONTLINE that Bush told him: "I feel that I'm supposed to run for president. I don't wanna do that. I didn't wanna be governor. But I believe I'm supposed to. I can't explain it, but I believe my country's gonna need me."

"September 11th changed him [Bush]," Johnson tells FRONTLINE. "It made him realize we are at war, and war calls for the utmost from its leaders."

It was during America's war in Vietnam that the first differences between George W. Bush and John Kerry - two men of very similar backgrounds - began to emerge. Kerry's roommate at Yale tells FRONTLINE why Kerry signed up for Vietnam despite his opposition to the war. "Our class went to serve," says Harvey Bundy, member of the Yale class of '66. "We may have had doubts, but having doubts and asking questions is different from saying, 'I won't serve.'"

George Bush, Yale '68, served but managed to avoid going to Vietnam by landing a coveted position in the Texas National Guard. "I made a call because a friend asked me to allow young George Bush to be considered for the National Guard," then-Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes tells FRONTLINE in a rare interview. Barnes says that he did so for a lot of other people. "It was something that state officials were doing in Texas and around the country for young men to get into the National Guard."

Bush relished his stint with the Guard, where he'd been trained as a pilot. "I think he was on a high at that point," says close Bush friend Doug Hannah. "He was a pilot, he was flying ... and clearly enjoyed the aura of walking around in a flight suit and being a flyboy. He was pretty proud of himself."

Following the war, Kerry - now decorated with three Purple Hearts, a Silver and a Bronze Star - embarked on a public service career. "The Choice 2004" highlights his first, ill-fated congressional campaign. Perceived as a carpetbagger who tried to exploit anti-war sentiment for his own political gain, he was rejected by voters in Massachusetts' fifth district.

Kerry took a job as an assistant district attorney. Bill Codinha remembers his colleague taking on the case of a prostitute who had been raped. "I just thought it would be a very difficult case for a jury to sort of say, 'Okay, I can understand intellectually the difference between someone who has sex for money and who, if she doesn't get paid, can claim she was raped.' It was a nuance." Kerry tried the case and won.

In 1978, Bush, like his father and grandfather before him, turned his attention to politics, with a run for Congress. However, Bush, like Kerry, would lose his first campaign. After his loss, he pursued his fortunes in the oil industry, building a company with money raised from family friends. Business partner Mike Conaway tells FRONTLINE that Bush said he wanted to establish "the next Exxon." But Bush abandoned the oil business a few years later with little to show, and he next embarked on a lucrative, but controversial, endeavor: building a new stadium for the Texas Rangers baseball team. Bush and his business partners were granted tax breaks to construct the ballpark and had a special law passed allowing them to seize neighboring land for its construction.

Ann Richards, Governor of Texas at the time, says, "It gave millionaires a tax break and a chance to make a whole lot more money." Bush invested $600,000 in the Rangers. When he cashed in his stake, it was worth $15 million.

"The Choice 2004" continues as Bush and Kerry return to politics - this time successfully.

Education was the focus of Bush's campaign for the Texas governorship, and once in office, he staked his reputation on school finance reform. Governor Bush's former chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, tells FRONTLINE it was a tough issue. "No one had ever bellied up to that bar again to take it on. And he was willing to risk his capital," he says.

Governor Bush worked closely with Texas Democrats to pass his reform bill, putting personal and political credibility on the line and forging alliances across the aisle. Ultimately, the bill died when a coterie of conservative Republicans refused to vote for it. Paul Sadler, a Texas Democrat and Bush's leading ally on the issue, says that Bush embraced him and cried when the bill failed. "It was an emotional time for him. It was an emotional time for all of us," Sadler says.

Meanwhile, John Kerry was now a senator from Massachusetts. Three months into his first term, the former prosecutor began an unauthorized investigation into reports that the Reagan administration was illegally providing aid to the rebel Nicaraguan contra armies and misleading the American people about the extent of U.S. involvement in that country. Kerry was ultimately bumped from the investigation. "He was the guy who had been looking at the problem," says former Senate counsel Jack Blum. "And now they said, 'Well, we'll have some other people look at the problem.' I believe because he would have asked the very difficult questions that the committee successfully avoided."

William Weld, head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division during the Iran-Contra hearings, and who later ran a losing campaign against Kerry for his Senate seat, offers a different explanation. "They regarded him as a complete grandstander," says Weld. "They hated his investigating. And he regarded them as part of the problem, not part of the solution."

Ultimately, "The Choice 2004" returns to the 2004 campaign and the economic and social issues that divide the nation and define the candidates, as well as the one issue that may decide the election: the war in Iraq and the ongoing threat of terrorism.

"There's a very fundamental difference in philosophy and approach," says Karen Hughes. "And you have a clear difference in philosophy about governing, about winning the war on terror and waging the war on terror, which I believe fundamentally-as a working mom myself-I really believe in the end, when voters go to the polls this November, they're going to vote based fundamentally on the candidate they believe will keep their family safer."

"The Choice 2004" is part of PBS' "By the People" election coverage.

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