A bit of back story to the incredible presidency of G.W. Bush:
In March 1997, only 2 months after Pres. Clinton's 2nd Inaugural, David Gergen was the lunch speaker at a conference at the Ritz Carlton in DC for some finance industry execs. At that early date, he asked the audience if they had "any idea who the Republicans are going nominate in 2000?" That opening created a bit of a buzz, but not as much as his stunning answer to his own question: "George Bush!"
When the crowd's murmurs got audible enough to hear at his podium, he said, in showmanlike fashion, "No, not the 'George Bush' you're thinking of. Not 'President George H.W. Bush'; You should be thinking of 'Governor George Dubya Bush', the new governor of Texas."
Gergen then went on to explain that several powerful and influential members of the GOP were gathering a movement to make this "compassionate conservative" and aggressive campaigner be their party's flag bearer in 2000.
Amazingly, in retrospect, it is clear that these "influential Republicans" were the PNAC signatories who included Cheney, Wolfowitz, Kristol, Rumsfeld, Feith, Frum, and Woolsey and all of the other neocon insiders. And it was their efforts to recruit a willing Dubya to be their happy face to their plans.
Btw, does anyone really think that Dubya was so organized to be able to get himself motivated and then nominated with his own organization alone? Not on your life! Dubya had as much organizational capacity as he had talent as an oil wildcatter. Left to his own devices he'd be bankrupt.
