Four days later, on June 28, the same court handed Cheney a major defeat, ruling the government could not hold Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters without access to court. Ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the court affirmed the president's right to declare not just foreigners but even an American citizen caught fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan like Yaser Esam Hamdi an enemy combatant but required the government to allow such detainees-including those at Guantnamo-to challenge their imprisonment in court. "We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens," wrote Sandra Day O'Connor, a stinging rebuke from the justice whose vote had decided Bush v. Gore four years earlier.

BUSH WAS IN Istanbul at a NATO summit the same day when Donald Rumsfeld reached over his shoulder and passed him a note from Condoleezza Rice: "Mr. President, Iraq is sovereign. Letter was passed from Bremer at 10:26 a.m., Iraqi time."

Bush picked up a pen and scrawled on it, "Let freedom reign!" Then he turned to his right and shook hands with Tony Blair.

It was an exciting moment for Bush, one he would long cherish. A giant picture of him with the "Let freedom reign!" note was later hung in the West Wing. While others were rotated regularly, that one stayed there for years.

Just like that, the occupation was officially over. But the war was not. As hopeful as Bush was, the very manner in which the transfer took place underscored the decidedly mixed nature of the accomplishment. Bush, worried about terrorist attacks timed to the scheduled transfer of authority on June 30, had suggested through Rice that Bremer secretly move it up a few days. Bremer's aides even confiscated the phones of reporters summoned to hear the announcement so he could leave the country before it was publicly known. Better to live with the troublesome symbolism than to let a bomb go off in the middle of a ceremony.

Bremer's replacement would be an ambassador who would still wield outsized influence in Iraq but no longer as the governing authority. Bush picked John Negroponte, a veteran diplomat who had been serving at the United Nations. Replacing Ricardo Sanchez was General George Casey, a well-respected officer but one who had never served in combat and had no background in the Arab world. Bush invited Casey to the White House for a social dinner with their wives, but otherwise the two men had no substantive meeting before Casey's departure for Baghdad. Bush and Cheney hoped that Iraq might be on a path toward stability, a hope enhanced by the approach of the presidential election.

NEITHER BUSH NOR Cheney was all that impressed with the emerging Democratic ticket. Karl Rove had assumed John Kerry would pick Richard Gephardt as his running mate to lock down labor support, but Matthew Dowd correctly predicted it would be John Edwards.

On July 7, the day after Kerry's announcement, Bush was asked about the choice by a reporter during a stop in Raleigh.

"He's being described today as charming, engaging, a nimble campaigner, a populist, and even sexy," the reporter said. "How does he stack up against Dick Cheney?"

"Dick Cheney can be president," Bush answered sharply, then moved on to another reporter. "Next."

As it happened, the 9/11 Commission had been investigating whether Cheney actually was president, at least briefly, on the day of the hijackings. In its draft report, the panel raised questions about whether the vice president gave the order to shoot down threatening planes before getting permission from Bush. Reading over the draft before its release, Cheney grew incensed and called Thomas Kean, the commission chairman.

"Governor, this is not true, just not fair," he told Kean. "The president has told you, I have told you, that the president issued the order. I was following his directions."

Kean said he would ask the staff to review the language in the report again. But the commission ended up releasing the report on July 22 largely unaltered. It came out shortly after another report produced by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the botched prewar intelligence about Iraq's weapons program. The two reports collectively called attention to the lowest moments of Bush and Cheney's tenure, the failure to adequately see the threat of al-Qaeda and move more expeditiously to counter terrorism in the months before September 11 and the fixation on Saddam Hussein that led them to disregard contrary evidence on the preordained path to war. Both reports threw cold water on Cheney's view of the links between al-Qaeda and Hussein's Iraq.

At the same time, the reports also provided balanced portraits that undercut the worst charges lodged against Bush and Cheney by their critics. The Senate report found no evidence that Bush or Cheney had pressured intelligence agencies into skewing reports on Iraq. The 9/11 Commission spread blame around evenly without singling out Bush or Cheney. While the vice president was still irritated, White House officials who had feared the worst in an election year sighed in relief.

A week after the 9/11 Commission report, Democrats officially nominated Kerry and Edwards. Cheney hit the campaign trail with gusto. In Dayton, Ohio, on August 12, he mocked Kerry for being weak. "Senator Kerry has also said that if he were in charge, he would fight a 'more sensitive' war on terror," Cheney said, provoking a wave of laughter. Lincoln and Roosevelt "did not wage sensitive warfare," he added. "Those who threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively. They need to be destroyed."

Two weeks later, though, Cheney finally got the question he had avoided since January.

"I need to know what do you think about homosexual marriages," a voter asked at a forum in Davenport, Iowa.

Cheney did not duck. "My general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone," he said.

Then he noted that Bush had come out in support of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The issue had come up for a vote in the Senate the month before and fell nineteen votes short of passage. Cheney could have ducked, but he acknowledged that he and Bush disagreed.

"My own preference is as I've stated," Cheney said. "But the president makes basic policy for the administration. And he's made it clear that he does, in fact, support a constitutional amendment on this issue."

Aides were surprised that Cheney had just taken on Bush in public. "We were all proud of him because we were all close to Mary," said Neil Patel, his domestic policy adviser. Cheney's traveling press secretary, Anne Womack, e-mailed a heads-up to campaign headquarters and soon received an anxious phone call demanding to know what happened. But then the issue was dropped. Cheney said later that neither Bush nor Karl Rove ever brought it up with him. "They were pretty good about letting me do my thing," he said.

LIFE ON THE ROAD took on a familiar rhythm and drew Bush closer to his aides. After a rally in Taylor, Michigan, on August 30, Bush heard that his deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin, had lost his mother. Hagin had not told the president or even dropped off the campaign swing.

Bush went to Hagin's hotel room and found him on the phone with his brother. Hagin's back was turned, so Bush just sat down on the bed and waited. Only after five minutes or so had passed did Hagin hang up and realize who was there. Bush spent an hour consoling Hagin, an eternity in the life of a president.

From there, Bush headed to the Republican National Convention, intending to use it to bolster his credentials as America's protector. By holding it in New York, a city not normally friendly to Republicans, he and Cheney reminded everyone of their role in responding to the attacks three years earlier, and they depicted Iraq as a logical extension of the war on terror that followed. What they were not acknowledging was how bad the fighting in Iraq had become. Bush had just gotten a letter from Prime Minister Ayad Allawi making that point. "The situation on the ground in Iraq is grossly unstable," Allawi wrote to Bush. "The threat is now much greater than it was a year ago and it is continuing to escalate."

For public purposes, though, Bush and Cheney depicted Iraq being on the right course and potentially jeopardized by a Democratic victory. In his address the night of September 1, Cheney enthusiastically took on the other ticket. "Senator Kerry's liveliest disagreement is with himself," he said to chants of "flip-flop, flip-flop!" "His back-and-forth reflects a habit of indecision and sends a message of confusion. And it is all part of a pattern. He has, in the last several years, been for the No Child Left Behind Act-and against it. He has spoken in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement-and against it. He is for the Patriot Act-and against it. Senator Kerry says he sees two Americas. He makes the whole thing mutual-America sees two John Kerrys."

For Bush's speech the next night, aides wanted to strike a more measured tone. Ed Gillespie, the Republican National Committee chairman, was worried about "Bush fatigue"-not the blinding hate felt by many liberals who were never going to vote for him, but a certain weariness among everyday voters. Gillespie suggested the president talk about seeking "a new term" rather than "a second term," to sound fresh rather than more of the same.

As he practiced his speech in a hotel suite, though, Bush kept tripping over a line about holding "the children of the fallen." Invariably, he choked up. However justified he felt the Iraq War was, Bush understood the toll it was taking on families across America. It was the one thing that cracked his Texas bravado.

Maybe it would be safer to just take the line out, someone suggested.

Michael Gerson objected. "Mr. President, we need to do this," Gerson said.

Bush grew snippy. "We don't have to do this," he said. "I am doing this."

As he stepped onto the stage that night, Bush was greeted by a wave of enthusiasm. He opened with praise for his partner. "I am fortunate to have a superb vice president," he said. "I have counted on Dick Cheney's calm and steady judgment in the difficult days, and I am honored to have him at my side."

As delegates chanted "four more years," Bush outlined what he termed the Ownership Society, ideas like providing tax credits to encourage health savings accounts, allowing workers to invest some of their Social Security payroll taxes in stocks or bonds, and encouraging more home ownership. As a conservative counter to the New Deal and the Great Society, the Ownership Society was intended to give Americans more control to make decisions. Little did he imagine that making it easier for people to buy homes might prove to be a risky venture.

But his main focus was national security, declaring that "freedom is on the march" in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and going directly after Kerry by citing his voted-for-it-before-voting-against-it quote. He mentioned hearing "whatever it takes" at Ground Zero on that wrenching day after the Twin Towers fell. "I will never relent in defending America-whatever it takes," he said. He defended his decision to invade Iraq by recalling that Kerry supported it too, and he linked it to the attack on the city playing host to the convention. "Do I forget the lessons of September the 11th and take the word of a madman?" he asked, referring to Saddam Hussein. "Or do I take action to defend our country? Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time."

He got through the line about the children of the fallen without a problem. After he stepped offstage, Gerson asked how he did it.

"I didn't look at the audience," Bush said. "I just looked up."

Bush had another emotional encounter the next day as he headed out to campaign. At a minor-league baseball stadium in Moosic, Pennsylvania, on September 3, someone in the crowd called out, "Mr. President, we can hear you now!"

The crowd got the reference and cheered, but Bush didn't and apologized for being hoarse. Sitting onstage, Laura Bush looked at the man who had yelled.

"I'm the voice from Ground Zero," he said.

It was Rocco Chierichella, the firefighter who met Bush at the site of the attacks.

Laura whispered in the president's ear, and he turned. "I'll see you later," he told Chierichella.

After the speech, Chierichella and his son were brought into the locker room to meet Bush.

"So you're the guy," Bush said. "I've been using your line for years."

Bush told him he would be in the history books.

Chierichella shrugged. "I couldn't hear you," he said.

Bush shook his hand and grew emotional, wiping tears from his eyes.

"Mr. President, my daughter's going to West Point," the firefighter told him. "Because of you. You changed my life."

Bush shook his head. "No," he said, "you changed my life."

BUSH AND CHENEY emerged from the convention with the traditional bounce. Karl Rove had left little to chance in building a reelection architecture. From the start, he had set out to fully tap the resources of the federal government within the broad and relatively permissive extent of the law. Other presidential strategists had done much the same over the years, but few as systematically.

Rove oversaw an asset-deployment team that managed high-visibility trips and official grant announcements so as to promote the president's agenda and his Republican allies. Rove's team organized scores of political briefings at federal departments and agencies with election-themed slides. Half of the twenty-two grants released by the Department of Health and Human Services in late September, just weeks before the election, went to targeted states or districts, according to one media analysis; the news release announcing them focused at the top on four recipients, all of which had been highlighted in the political briefings. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao's thirteen official trips in the final weeks before the election all took her to media markets on the political target list, the analysis found. The blending of government and politics triggered investigations by watchdog offices and disgruntled even some of Rove's colleagues. David Kuo, the deputy director of faith-based and community initiatives in the White House, grew alienated when his office volunteered to do roundtables around the country but was then told by a Rove aide to specifically target twenty races during the 2002 midterm elections. In response to the pressure, the office kept a political map with every state shaded according to importance.

Just days after the convention, the campaign faced a tenuous moment. On September 7, the American death toll in Iraq hit one thousand, the vast majority of them taking place after Bush declared major combat operations over in front of the "Mission Accomplished" banner. It was a sobering milestone. But on the campaign trail, Cheney argued that the United States could not afford to give ground.

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice," he told supporters in a fiery speech in Des Moines. "Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating."

The line was a sharper articulation of the same argument Bush and Cheney had made for months, that Democrats would return the country to a pre-September 11 mind-set that looked at terrorism as a law enforcement matter rather than a war.

But his stark equation-a vote for Kerry would mean a successful terrorist attack-took it a step further and resulted in gales of protest from the other side. "Dick Cheney's scare tactics crossed the line today, showing once again that he and George Bush will do anything and say anything to save their jobs," John Edwards fired back.

As Cheney flew to his next stop in New Hampshire, cell phones aboard the plane began ringing from campaign headquarters with what-did-he-say questions. Scooter Libby argued that the line was being misread and began quarreling with the stenographer about where a comma should go. Reporters were blamed for blowing it out of proportion, further souring a relationship that had already led Cheney to ban the New York Times from Air Force Two and also to try to kick off the Associated Press until he was talked out of it. Anne Womack, his press secretary, was sent into Cheney's cabin to get him to walk back the line. Cheney was irritated. As far as he was concerned, this was just game playing. "That is what I meant," he snapped.

WITH DEBATES APPROACHING, Bush was not as engaged in preparing as four years earlier. A commander in chief in the middle of a war has less time than a challenger. Moreover, Bush was distinctly unenthusiastic about debating and even less so about practicing. The fact that he would go up against Kerry only increased his irritability. Kerry exemplified everything Bush had long despised about the haughty Yale-Eastern-elite culture. "Bush thought Kerry was a pedantic and arrogant flip-flopper and didn't like the Massachusetts senator," as Rove later put it.

Rove worried as he watched Bush glide through debate prep. The president "was rusty," unlike Kerry, who had just emerged from a tough primary battle. Bush misjudged his opponent, telling aides that Kerry would not be overly aggressive because he would want to look presidential. Senator Judd Gregg, who played Al Gore in 2000, put his Democratic mask back on to play Kerry, but he flew to Crawford for prep sessions just three or four times, rather than every week as he had the last time. "You didn't feel the heightened tension or newness or the originality that had to happen with the Gore debates," he recalled. "The president was president. He knew what he wanted to say." Dan Bartlett dubbed this presidentialitis-the notion that a president does not need to be prepped, a feeling of "I got this."

Bush arrived in Florida the day before the first debate with a commanding position in the race. The latest Gallup poll showed him with an eight-point lead. The debate could cement that. "If the president does reasonably well, this basically should button down the election," Matthew Dowd concluded. Bush spent part of the day before the evening encounter on September 30 inspecting recent hurricane damage by helicopter and on foot with his brother Jeb. By afternoon, he had returned to his hotel and had a massage to get ready. Only later did advisers come to regret scheduling other activities for the day. Bush was weary.

A couple hours before the debate, the president called Bartlett to his suite. "Now," Bush said, "what do you want me to say about Kerry?"

Bartlett was alarmed. Houston, we've got a problem, he thought as he left. He found other members of the campaign team.

"What's wrong?" someone asked.

"I don't think this is going to go well," Bartlett said.

Onstage at the University of Miami that night, Bush found an opponent who quickly got under his skin. Kerry went after the president aggressively, declaring that Bush had made "a colossal error of judgment" in invading Iraq and had "outsourced" the hunt for Osama bin Laden to Afghan warlords. Bush fired back, reminding voters that Kerry had also declared Saddam Hussein a "grave threat" and voted for war.

The exchange flared over the validity of preemptive war. "You have to do it in a way that passes the test," Kerry said, "that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

Bush jumped on that. "I'm not exactly sure what you mean, 'passes the global test,' you take preemptive action if you pass a global test," he said with undisguised scorn. "My attitude is you take preemptive action in order to protect the American people, that you act in order to make this country secure."

The rules required the camera to stay on the candidate who was speaking without reaction shots, but the networks had no intention of obeying a rule they did not negotiate, and the Bush team knew that. Still, his advisers seemed surprised to see a split screen showing the president scowling with disdain as Kerry spoke. After four years in office with a Congress of his own party and a staff that idolized him, Bush had grown unaccustomed to being challenged.

Just as Gore's sighs were off-putting in 2000, so now were Bush's glowers and grimaces. Karen Hughes broke it to him afterward that pundits were offering a harsh judgment.

"They're going to report that you lost the debate," she told him.

"Why?"

"You looked mad."

"I wasn't mad. Tell them that."

"I can't. Because you did look mad."

She was not the only one who told him. Rove told him "his dislike for Kerry was making him come across as unlikable." Bartlett, Ken Mehlman, and Mark McKinnon echoed the assessment. Andy Card concluded that "he didn't really want to be at the first debate." Even Laura Bush weighed in. "I don't know what happened," she told him. "You've got to be yourself and you weren't." Even so, it took a review of the pictures to make Bush see. "I don't think I was that irritated," he told a friendly journalist after the election. "My facial expressions must have said that." The polls certainly confirmed the judgment. The eight-point advantage in the Gallup survey disappeared overnight, and suddenly Bush was in a tie. "We came out of that debate and it is a whole new ball game," Dowd concluded. "The performance was a disaster."

CHENEY STARTED DEBATE prep long before Bush did and was determined to help the ticket, but where he was a comforting face in 2000, four years later he had become a forbidding figure to the public. One day after a debate prep session at the vice presidential residence, most of his advisers had drifted off, and Cheney was left with Scooter Libby and Neil Patel. Libby raised the issue that consumed other White House aides but was rarely mentioned around the vice president.

"Sir, have you ever looked at your polls?" Libby asked.

"No, not really," Cheney said, and it seemed possible he really meant it.

"You might want to take a look," Libby said. "They're pretty bad."

"Really? What are they?"

In some polls, his approval rating was below 50 percent.

"You need to remember," Cheney said, "that no one is voting for vice president and that it might help that mine be bad and the president's be a tiny bit better."

"Don't you think during an election that we should work on it a little bit?" Libby asked.

"You've got to remember, no one is voting for the vice president," Cheney repeated. "I really don't care."

Cheney retreated to Jackson Hole for the final debate preparation. He looked up one day to find Dowd, who had flown to Wyoming to see him.

"This is the situation," Dowd told him. "You have to stop the bleeding."

Liz Cheney once again ran debate preparations, and she worried that John Edwards's experience as a trial attorney would make him a formidable opponent. The vice president carved out four or five hours a day to practice. Rob Portman reprised his role as the opposition candidate, and Stuart Stevens was again the moderator. Stevens lightened the mood by asking "insane questions that no one would ever ask," and Cheney gave "the most unbelievable dry answers," recalled Neil Patel. Some in the room thought Cheney did not win the initial practice debates. "In the early ones, Portman did better, and as it went on, Cheney got better and better," said Tevi Troy, another aide. The pressure was on. The night before the debate, Libby told Cheney that it would fall to him to make the case for the Iraq War. Lynne Cheney glared at him with irritation, evidently annoyed that the onus was placed on her husband.

The day before the debate, Cheney went fly-fishing with Portman again, then joined his family for a quiet dinner. He flew on October 5 to Cleveland, where he met Edwards onstage at Case Western Reserve University. He looked down at a note card Liz had given him.

Your children and grandchildren will never forget-and will tell their children and grandchildren-everything you have done for this great nation. We love you more than anything. Now go kick some butt.

If his family was trying to boost him, Democrats were trying to unnerve him. Seated in the audience right in his eyesight was Senator Patrick Leahy, with whom he had skirmished on the Senate floor.

But Cheney held his own, attacking Edwards for inconsistency on the war. Cheney had none of the respect for Edwards that he had had for Joseph Lieberman four years earlier. In Cheney's mind, Edwards was slick and shallow, a presumptuous opportunist, and he did not disguise his contempt. "Senator, frankly, you have a record in the Senate that's not very distinguished," Cheney said at one point, citing missed meetings and votes. "Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of the Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight." Strictly speaking, that was not true. The two had both attended the same National Prayer Breakfast once. But Cheney had made his point: Edwards was not a serious figure.

For Cheney, the most memorable moment of the debate came when the moderator, Gwen Ifill of PBS, asked about his break with Bush over same-sex marriage.

"People ought to be free to choose any arrangement they want," Cheney said. "It's really no one else's business. That's a separate question from the issue of whether or not government should sanction or approve or give some sort of authorization, if you will, to these relationships." That, he said, should be left to the states. But he added that the president set policy for the administration and he supported the president.

When Edwards responded, he mentioned Mary Cheney. "Let me say first that I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter," he began. "I think they love her very much. And you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her."

In the audience, Mary Cheney was steaming. He thinks they love me? "What gave him the right to use my sexual orientation to try to score political points?" she later asked. She caught Edwards glancing at her, and she mouthed a phrase that had become famous in her family and hoped he could read her lips: "Go fuck yourself." Her mother and sister stuck their tongues out at him.

Edwards went on to say that he and Kerry agreed that marriage is between a man and a woman but they supported partnership benefits for gay couples and criticized Bush for trying to "use the Constitution to divide this country."

When Ifill asked Cheney to respond, he said, "Well, Gwen, let me simply thank the senator for the kind words he said about my family and our daughter. I appreciate that very much."

"That's it?" Ifill asked.

"That's it."

With that, Cheney had fulfilled Dowd's assignment. The slide in the polls was arrested.

THE DAY AFTER the debate, October 6, Charles Duelfer, who had taken over from David Kay as head of the Iraq Survey Group, produced his final report on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction. Just as Kay had, Duelfer concluded Saddam Hussein had no such weapons and was making no concerted effort to develop them. Hussein's illicit weapons capability "was essentially destroyed in 1991" and had not been reestablished. Indeed, Duelfer and his twelve-hundred-member team determined that Iraq, under pressure from the United Nations, had destroyed its last factory capable of producing militarily significant quantities of biological weapons in 1996. And they found no evidence of any attempt to buy uranium from Niger or anywhere else after 1991.

Hussein did harbor a desire to eventually re-create a weapons program after convincing the United Nations to lift sanctions, believing such arms had saved his regime during the war with Iran, deterred the United States from pressing on to Baghdad during the Gulf War, and intimidated Shiite opponents. And he had corrupted the UN oil-for-food program, essentially buying off key French and Russian officials. While Hussein wanted to pursue a nuclear capability, Duelfer reported the Iraqi dictator was focused mainly on ballistic missiles and tactical chemical weapons, and his interest was driven not by conflict with the United States but by fear of Iran, his principal enemy in the region. But this was all notional; there was "no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions," Duelfer wrote in the nine-hundred-page report.

Bush and Cheney, naturally, focused on the parts reporting Hussein's ambitions for destructive weapons, but the main message was that the war had been justified on false intelligence. "U.S. Report Finds Iraqis Eliminated Illicit Arms in 90's," read the front-page headline in the New York Times. "U.S. 'Almost All Wrong' on Weapons," said the Washington Post.