That is the title of this LA Times article profiling how G.W. Bush reshaped his conservatism and his personal style during his father’s 1988 campaign … a period of time that clearly shaped his approach to the presidency and campaigning (Lee Atwater lives on, it appears). Not much has been written about this period and its formative effects; the article is worth a full read. A sample:

“Jesus Christ is my personal savior,” Bush said when asked about his faith. By the end, the message was clear to the conservatives: George W. Bush was one of them.

With that encounter, Bush was already showing the kind of ideological clarity, personal passion and sense of mission that his father often lacked — and that would become the hallmark of his own presidency 12 years later.

The episode was one small part of a rich political education that Bush gained from working on his father’s 1988 presidential campaign. That experience gave “Junior,” as he was then known, exposure to two forces that would prove enormously important to his own political rise: the evangelical movement, which has become a core part of his political base; and an emerging style of hardball campaigning, which he used to defeat Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the 2000 Republican primaries and has unfurled against his presumed 2004 Democratic opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

Read it all.