Why he won....

'Why do they bother?'
Will Walden covered this year's race for the White House alongside the BBC's Washington correspondent Matt Frei. Over the final month of the campaign they followed President George W Bush across America, visiting 25 cities across seven states in 28 days.
"Why do they bother? And why do we?" BBC cameraman Jason Ellson implored me.
I had to confess I had no answer. We had slept for under three hours. I had actually paid the hotel bill when we arrived and we'd been on the road to Wilmington for 45 minutes without exchanging so much as a word.
For once Matt and Ron Skeans, our other cameraman, had managed a lie in.
Of course there was something of the jaded cynic in both Jason's question and my failure to respond.
We had, naturally, seen too much of him, George that is. The old stump speech was just that - old.
And all four of us could do every line - inflection and nuance included.
My particular favourite - the Laura line - "The most important reason to re-elect me is so that Laura can be your First Lady for four more years" - always got a laugh from us, because no matter how many times he said it, it got a big roar of approval from them.
And still I had no answer.
'You know where I stand'
And then there it was - on the final morning of the campaign, on the road to Wilmington, Ohio - a pre-dawn revelation at the corner of Hunter Drive.
In that instant, I knew why. And I knew deep down why that why was about to return George W Bush to the White House.
Red brake lights bumper to bumper for miles ahead. "Because they care," I told Jason.
The most important reason to re-elect me is so that Laura can be your First Lady for four more years President George W Bush
On that corner, and in that freezing aircraft hanger where Bush swept in on Marine One, and in the streets of small-town America we met Republicans yes, but we also met the undecided, the independents, even the "Bush" Democrat.
And every one had the same explanation - they were voting for Bush because he was their president, running their country, in a time of war.
Nothing more, nothing less. Why rock that boat?
Americans revere the office, not the man, but in choosing the man, they want someone who befits the office, and in a time of war that office befitted George W Bush best.
So as the president himself often said: "You may not like what I stand for, but at least you know where I stand."
True of Iraq, true of national security, true of those much-talked about moral values.
He had a position, he stuck to it, and yes, it made him, on occasion, appear to some as stubborn or even arrogant. But it also made him appear strong.
And when it comes to "us and them" America will, it seems, always choose strong.
The 'wow' factor
There are of course more complicated reasons. There had never been a post-9/11 election before, because there had never been a 9/11.
Bush can be engaging, charming, even witty. Kerry, more often than not, was none of these.
And then there was the brilliantly played 'Rove hand', dealt by Bush's chief planner Karl Rove.
The Rove/Bush doctrine of the three Fs - Family, Faith and Flag - hit home, where it mattered most, in heartland America.
Fear that the three Fs would be eroded under John Kerry was enough to mobilise millions of evangelical Christians who hadn't voted in 2000.
Wherever we travelled, one line more than any other brought the biggest cheer of the night.
The one about family values brought conservative America to its feet and sent them home happy in the knowledge that Dubya was the guardian of their moral, as well as their physical, security.
And then there was the simple fact that the president looked presidential. However hard you tried, you simply couldn't help feeling 'wow'.
I remember travelling to New Hampshire with Laura Bush. In her motorcade, on her plane, close enough to talk to her.
Which we did, and yes she's as normal as she seems. It made me think: "If I'm impressed what must these small town folk think of it all?"
Passionate, but stage-managed
Folk in places like Richland Center in Wisconsin. Five thousand strong, a remote windswept town on Highway 14 West.
Bush arrived on a rainy Wednesday lunchtime. So did the entire town.
He'd come because he had too, he needed the votes, they'd come because they wanted to...because the president was visiting.
One woman in the line, a teacher at the High School, told us she'd encouraged all her pupils to "come visit the President", that it was "such an honour he was bothering with Richland Center".
Matt asked her if she'd be voting for Bush. "Probably not," she replied. Later on, watching her watch him, I wasn't so sure.
Of course much of the campaign was aggressively stage managed. The die-hard were bussed in from miles around.
"Bombard them enough and eventually the message sticks," was how one junior aide described it.
The warm-up acts at these set-piece rallies were often a mix of celebrity, politician, or minister. Invariably, they involved a prayer, a pledge, a stirring rendition of the anthem.
But they were also about the ordinary American. The small-business owner, worried about being taxed out of existence by those "nasty" Democrats.
Or the mum, who, regardless of her husband's recent redundancy, apparently shared the president's views on family, stem cell research, partial birth abortion, the sanctity of marriage. Clever stuff.
Not once did we face the "Blair moment" - the type of moment where mid-speech the speaker is interrupted by a small but vocal group of protesters. The secret service would never have allowed it.
And besides, you couldn't help but feel the Republicans had vetted everyone days ahead of time.
Yes, people really did care about all this. That, more than anything, was the most encouraging thing about this election.
'Very heated, very quickly'
I was transfixed by the response of thousands of students at the University of Miami, site of the opening presidential debate. For 90 minutes no-one went to the bar, no-one talked, no-one lurched drunkenly across campus.
They just concentrated really hard on the big screens in front of them. They chuckled when Bush mangled the odd sentence, whooped when Kerry and flip-flop appeared in the same sentence, applauded when the candidates found the right tone.
And afterwards, these kids stood in line to talk to the television cameras, and what they said was both informed and eloquent.
And yes we found division, everywhere we went.
In Boulder, Colorado, we met Steve and Susan Kremm and their two sons, Democrats who couldn't quite believe Bush was their president.
"You just can't talk about this election without it getting heated, very heated, very quickly," Susan told us.
"How can the American public be so stupid", lamented Steve, "To swallow that line about Iraq being a threat, it's a disgrace!"
Just 100 miles south, in Colorado Springs, we met Chuck and Vicky Broerman and their four girls.
Staunch Catholics who admired the president. A strong leader, a man of conviction, a man of family.
"It's the future of the world at stake," Vicky told us. "And only George Bush knows how to defend us, and keep us safe."
Chuck, Vicky and the girls won the day, along with 59 million others. Nearly 56 million saw it differently.
Will George W Bush reach out to them? He says he wants to. Whether they want him to - well, that's another story.