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You can't tell the players without a scorecard (Frist is the one with the defibrillator), and you don't always know who is ahead — let alone who is ultimately going to win — while the action is underway.

With the preliminaries out of the way (we were as sick up and fed with all that leaking as you were, Mr. President), the POTUS will formally roll out his economic plan today at the Chicago Economic Club at 1:15 p.m. ET; there will be no White House morning gaggle or briefing, and Mr. Bush currently has no other public events scheduled.

ABCNEWS' Textor reports that Bush economic adviser Stephen Friedman will head to Wall Street on Thursday to sell the president's plan, and Vice President Cheney will give a speech in Washington on Friday. Treasury Secretary-designate John Snow will wait it out on the sidelines until he gets confirmed by the Senate.

Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle and his colleagues, including Senator Clinton, will gather to, among other things (like announce the party's leadership), presumably denounce the president's plan at 1:45 p.m..

That'll give us a chance to see Daschle face the Capitol press corps and be out there with his colleagues, and maybe for us all to get a measure of how he will handle the caucus tensions that his presidential aspirations may be inciting.

Speaking of which, the South Dakota press (read: "Kranz") seems to think Daschle could announce his candidacy for president before another NFL ball is snapped.

"A collection of Daschle's confidants said Monday that he will announce as early as Saturday that he is forming an exploratory committee to seek the Democratic nomination for president," reports Messieurs Kranz, Raasch and Madden. LINK

"Daschle would be the fourth native South Dakotan to run for president."

"Daschle has already set goals for his first two hurdles … ' 'He plans to be first or second in the Iowa Caucus, helped by the close proximity to South Dakota. And he plans to finish second or third a week later in the New Hampshire, home to the nation's first primary." LINK

The day also will ooze good congressional b-roll as new members, and new members of the leadership, get sworn in, starting with Ms. Pelosi at 11:00 am. Vice President Cheney will be on hand to do his part, swearing in new members of the Senate.

On the economic stimulus package (dare we revive our old favorite term "stimpak?"), the Bush Administration is largely replicating its typically successful, incredibly tight-knit center-right coalition, which is to say that, except for the usual dissenting voices of lawmakers like Senators McCain and Grassley, the "Amen" chorus of congressional Republicans and most business groups is amplifying the Bush-Fleischer sound bites from yesterday, defending the logic and fairness of the still emerging presidential package.

Thank goodness for Leader Pelosi's gender, which allows us, today at least, to term the coverage of the competing plans as "he said, she said," which is pretty much what all the nets and papers have done this cycle.

The Washington Post 's Weisman notes that Bush's plan "is far bolder than proposals under consideration only a week ago, hoping to answer Democratic criticism that he has done too little to boost the economy and conservatives' concern that his new economic team will be overly cautious." LINK

"Administration officials, bracing for more Democratic criticism that the plan tilts toward the wealthy, contended that all citizens would benefit from more confidence in the financial markets."

"'When the stock market was going down, Democrats linked it to the economic health of the nation,' a GOP official said. 'Now they can't turn around and [say] it's just an elite thing.'"

Treasury Secretary "O'Neill also was adamantly opposed to assembling a package designed more as a negotiating position than a final proposal, according to one tax lobbyist close to the administration and congressional GOP leaders. Several lobbyists and congressional tax aides said the Bush package is just that."

"'They're being bold, knowing in the end they're not going to get everything through,' the lobbyist said. 'In classic Bush fashion, they're getting ready to declare victory with two-thirds of a loaf.'"

"The White House will press for quick action in the House to add pressure to the closely divided Senate. But if Democrats succeed in bottling up the plan, especially the elimination of dividend taxes, Republicans can then try to shift blame for depressed stock portfolios onto their political opponents, Bush supporters said."

Ah, the awesome public liaison shop at 1600 Pennsylvania, which the Wall Street Journal , in a big, broad, muscular Cummings-Hitt lead story ("Tax Cuts Lead Audacious Plan for Second Half of Bush's Term"), describes with vexing understatement: "To build momentum for the growth package, the White House is expecting to work closely with a coalition of conservative activists and business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business."

Is it just us, or does anyone else find it kinda amazing how the NFIB and the US Chamber of Commerce are out there saying, well, this doesn't have enough things in it that we want, but we're still for it because if the president thinks it's good enough for growth, it's good enough for us?

Come to think of it, given that the Rove-led bridge-building to conservative groups is arguably the most underrated aspect of this White House, we really aren't surprised at all.

Janet Hook writes in her Los Angeles Times must-read: "The White House soon will be trolling for Democratic support … but building a bipartisan coalition likely will be harder than two years ago when dozens of Democrats backed Bush's initial tax cut plan." LINK

House Democrats' "unveiling" of their own plan yesterday "signals determination among Democrats to take a more combative stand against a White House plan they see as a sop to the rich and an overpriced drain on the government's deficit-ridden budget."

"Bush's ability to reach across the aisle for votes for his new plan has been hampered by changes in the political and economic environment in the last two years. With budget surpluses giving way to deficits and possible war with Iraq looming, even moderate Democrats who have supported Bush's economic policies in the past are cool to his latest tax relief agenda."

The Washington Post 's Eilperin and Milbank write, "Yesterday's Democratic move begins a political and policy battle that will consume much of Congress's attention in the coming weeks … Democrats, still smarting from their election losses last fall, want to draw sharp contrasts with Republicans on the economy, highlighting increasing budget deficits and weak growth." LINK

The story's kicker: "Some Democratic senators have their own plans to stimulate the economy, which will complicate party efforts to make a united front on economic policies."

The mainstream press, to a more subtle degree, and the mainstream (read: liberal) punditocracy, to a more blatant degree, seem to be picking up on the class warfare argument and tossing it back in the administration's face.

AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney rips into the president's plan: "The notion of passing off an expensive, permanent change to the tax code that benefits the most affluent taxpayers under the guise of creating jobs for desperate unemployed workers should still generate hoots. And the warning by the president that his help-the-rich proposal may elicit 'class warfare' from its opponents should be greeted by groans, if not outright boos." LINK

Now that the Drudge preliminary teasing is over, we're at the beginning of David Frum's 15-and-a-half minute media tour over his new book on his former boss. The Los Angeles Times , for whatever reason, seems to have gotten a jump on the world with details from the "first insider book" on the Bush White House. LINK

"With the exception of chief political aide Karl Rove, Frum views Bush as surrounded by genial lieutenants — few of whom impressed the author with their intellectual power."

"Confronting a common criticism of the president, Frum also says: 'Bush was not a lightweight. He was, rather, a very unfamiliar type of heavyweight. Words often failed him, his memory sometimes betrayed him, but his vision was large and clear. And when he perceived new possibilities, he had the courage to act on them — a much less common virtue in politics than one might suppose."

Karen "Hughes, he writes, is something of a 'mother substitute' for Bush. She alone can criticize him, and when he performs well, he appears to take pride in reporting his success to her."

Rush and Molloy have a write-up also, with the choicest nuggets. LINK

The White House response to all of this will surely remain: we don't do book reviews or book promotion. That is one of the best talking points in Washington history — seriously.

The New Congress

The Washington Post editorial page, Charlie Cook, and other observers ponder the potential effects of the GOP's new and untested Senate Majority Leader. LINK

The Washington Times looks at Leader Frist's loaded legislative plate. LINK

The New York Times paints the Republicans as "scrambling" for an agenda. LINK

Health Care Politics

That Wall Street Journal lead story has section that ends with an awesome blind quote: "The White House hopes the two (Frist and Hastert) have the inside clout and outside credibility to drive through a Republican version of both cost-saving reforms and a drug benefit. In fitting these two elements together, the White House is ready to deal. House Republicans last year passed a drug benefit that would have cost some $310 billion over 10 years, and Mr. Hastert has told the president he wants this year's version to be in the $400 billion range."

"Though that is far bigger than what Mr. Bush campaigned on, the benefit might have to get bigger still to win the votes of Democrats for overhauling Medicare's structure. 'If it needs to go higher to get the votes we need for reform,' says a senior administration official, 'it'll go higher.'"

The Boston Globe 's Milligan reports, "The White House and congressional Republicans, hoping to snag the health care issue away from Democrats, are preparing a tax-based plan to help people buy health insurance or expand their current coverage." LINK

"Lobbyists who have been working with the Bush administration on health care say the president is backing a plan to allow employees and employers to make tax-free contributions to medical savings accounts for paying medical bills. The administration is also backing a plan to provide tax credits to help people buy health insurance. Those credits would be refundable, giving low-income people who have no tax bill federal funds to put toward health insurance premiums."

Budget Politics

Elisabeth Bumiller illustrates that one can be both a cable television host and a White House adviser (take Note, Paul Begala), with a look at the viewing habits of White House officials and one Mr. Kudlow. LINK

Having apparently helped formulate the Bush policy, Lawrence Kudlow is kind enough to endorse it in a New York Post op-ed. LINK

Paul Krugman continues to outpace the Democratic caucus in doing surgery on the Bush plan. LINK

The Wall Street Journal finds some who fear they will be left out in the cold, and somehow escaped the Rove dragnet: "For example, banking trade groups were seeking tax breaks for interest income to offset the "unfair" advantage that dividend-paying stocks would enjoy under Mr. Bush's plan, according to a recent letter to the White House."

"Tax-advantaged real-estate investment trusts and municipal-bond issuers also were watching closely to learn if the plan would mean tougher competition from dividend-paying stocks."

Alan Murray, who is about to learn what an incredibly shrewish barracuda that stuck-up Gloria Borger is (Note to Gloria: we are TOTALLY kidding, and congratulations), uses his remaining Dow Jones link to write on A4 of the The Wall Street Journal in full endorsement of the dividends provision, and/but he does some code breaking as well: "[N]o one should be fooled by promises of another tax bill later this year. The president's economic package is likely to be the one and only chance to make significant tax changes before next year's presidential elections. Any measures that are postponed until the 'second bill' likely will be delayed indefinitely."

ABC 2004: The Invisible Primary

The Note has been told that retired Gen. Wesley Clark plans to lunch with Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe today at the Army-Navy Club. (Sure, CNN, you can stake it out.)

And said-to-be-still-mulling-it-over Senator Bob Graham is expected to swing by the Macker's office in the afternoon.

Both Senators Daschle and Edwards yesterday came out criticizing the proposal to cut low-income heating oil assistance, which happens to be a big deal in the Midwest and New Hampshire — we mean, New England.

We think that all stories about Senators McCain and Lieberman's plan to push for greenhouse gas limits this week belong right here in this section. LINK

The AP's Chris Graff notes in his preview of Gov. Howard Dean's trip to DC Friday to receive the AFL-CIO's first Paul Wellstone Award that "[t]he timing of the award … is bound to boost Dean's image among labor as the competition for the labor vote among the Democratic presidential contenders becomes more intense."

The Note has heard from several luminaries, including several powerful Iowa labor activists, that Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio is on the verge of announcing his candidacy for president. Or that he's about to (or already has) set up an exploratory committee.

True, Kucinich has spoken with activists in 40 different cities, according to a senior member of his staff, who also says that his man hasn't decided whether — or when, if the weather is favorable — to announce. As for now, "he's just listening."

Nothing's been set up. Yet. And is a decision imminent? Says Kucinich press secretary Doug Gordon, "No comment."

The GOP's selection of New York for its 2004 convention gets plenty of coverage.

All you need to know about the Republican choice of New York for the 2004 convention: the re-elect is going to be about "leadership" (thanks, Joel Siegel LINK ), and New York is the best place to make that symbolic point, right before (presumably) the presidential debates, and within spitting distance of the election day.

Congratulations, Howell, on the pending nuptials.* LINK

Our wedding gift to you: don't get tricked into paying the prolific Jennifer Steinhauer by the story; you would bankrupt Arthur. On a glide path to match her 2002 production, Our Gal Jennifer sidebars Adam Nagourney's front-pager on the Big Apple convention with a look at Mayor Bloomberg's stylized lobbying to reel in the big fish. LINK

Only a cynic would say that the White House used Tampa (with a last-minute "Jeb doesn't want it" convenient talking point) and New Orleans to squeeze the best possible deal out of New York, where they were going to be headed in the end no matter what — and The Note is not cynical.

"The symbolic value of the venue is harder to measure," the Washington Post 's von Drehle writes, "but in this case, it could be significant. By holding their convention at Madison Square Garden, Republicans will have many opportunities to weave the unifying themes of Sept. 11, 2001, and the inspiring sacrifice and resilience of city residents, into the picture they present to the voting public." LINK

Rep. Dick Gephardt gave insider interviews to key papers in Iowa and New Hampshire yesterday, doing little to manage the expectations game that greeted the announcement of his candidacy.

But, as one very senior Iowa labor official put it yesterday, "some of the guys who supported him 14 years ago are dead."

"In an interview with The Des Moines Register , Gephardt, a 26-year U.S. House member from neighboring Missouri who won the caucuses in 1988, said he likes his chances in Iowa. 'I won it in "88 in a different time, with different competition, but I did it by doing all those things you have to do, and I hope to do it again,' he said." LINK

"He is the only candidate in the rapidly expanding Democratic field to have won the Iowa caucuses, the first contest in the national nominating process. No other announced candidate has even run in the caucuses before."

"But he faces an uphill battle in the race for the White House. No sitting member of Congress has won the presidency since then-Senator John F. Kennedy did it 42 years ago."

"Gephardt used labor support to win the 1988 caucuses, but his fund raising faltered and forced him to quit the race. Since then, he failed four times as minority leader to win back control of the House. He leaves the position today, having announced his decision not to seek a fifth term as leader after his party's poor showing in the Nov. 5 midterm elections."

Yesterday, Gephardt's campaign touted the hiring of John Lapp, who ran Tom Vilsack's re-election campaign, to be his Iowa caucus vote-corraller.

"Perhaps knowing this day would arrive, Dick Gephardt has tried hard to be the proverbial third U.S. House member from New Hampshire for more than a decade now," reports John DiStaso. LINK

"It's seemed that every time a Democrat ran for something in New Hampshire through the 1990s and so far in the new century, the former House Minority Leader has campaigned for the candidate personally and made financial contributions."

"'There is some help in having been there a lot over a 15-year period,' Gephardt, 61, said yesterday, soon after filing a Presidential exploratory committee with the Federal Election Commission. A spokesman said Gephardt transferred about $2.5 million from his House reelection committee to the exploratory fund."

"Now Gephardt is hoping the support he has shown for New Hampshire Democrats is returned — mostly with active 'on-the-ground' support to help him to a strong showing in the state's leadoff Presidential primary about 55 weeks from now."

"New Hampshire House Democratic Leader Peter Burling said, 'A politician from St. Louis would face a daunting job if he were confronted by a single favorite son from New England. The problem is less daunting when you have three New England candidates and the bloc is broken up. And through New Hampshire retail politics, even if you aren't a favorite son, any candidate who makes a determined effort to win votes can do it.'"

"That's how Gephardt hopes to parlay his history in New Hampshire into votes."

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Mannies assesses Gephardt's legacy in the wake of his decision not to run for re-election to the House. LINK

If, as this article predicts, an anti-abortion "push" in the New Hampshire legislature comes to pass, you can count abortion rights as one of the issues that the presidential hopefuls will find they have to address in an original voice, as NARAL already is seeking to encourage them to do. LINK

What do the Democratic hopefuls have in common besides their gender, income bracket, political party and antipathy to President Bush's agenda?

"[T]hese men believe that Bush the son is less nimble than Bush the father, that the current President Bush is an accidental president, and that the chances the United States will go through the next year unscathed by war, terror, or recession are slim."

"The fact that the Democrats left the field open to the unknown governor of Arkansas in 1991 — and then let him capitalize on the economic woes of 1992 — is luring candidate after candidate into the presidential waters in 2003." LINK

Rev. Sharpton spoke "truth to power" in Boston yesterday, according to a cheeky Marge Eagan write up. LINK

Godfrey Sperling enthuses over Senator Joseph Lieberman while acknowledging that anything's possible between now and next January. LINK

Dick Morris says that expectations game for candidates from neighboring states (Gephardt/Daschle in Iowa, Kerry in New Hampshire, and Edwards in South Carolina) gives Joe Lieberman a leg up, and that the expected Bush/war dominance of 2003 helps both Lieberman and Edwards. A must-read if you work for an exploratory committee or you are Walter Shapiro's researcher. LINK

We haven't reached the "soft peanut" or Carrick/Kaplan levels of intra-Democratic-nomination-fight animus quite yet, but our well-trained ears have picked up the rumblings of some eye-rolling and groaning from the supporters of certain presidential hopefuls concerning the mere notion that their guy could lose the nomination to some lesser mortal.

Senators Kerry, Lieberman, and Edwards are the most frequent targets of such belittling. One close watcher of the senior Senator from the Tar Heel State sent this work of art along as a Note exclusive:

Champion of the Regular Guy

I am the champ of the regular guy--
Unlike Leader Tom Daschle who hardly can try
To be regular when he's, well, the Boss
And led the poor Dems to a most irregular loss.

And Gephardt's so irregular, he needs Metamucil--
While his efforts to win the House were regularly futile,
He has zigged and zagged on every issue
From taxes and trade to fetal tissue.

And Dean? How regular this land of Ben and Jerry
With its same-sex politics and whining dairies?
And he's a doctor no less, with a fancy degree
, Who like all the MDs sucked up really big fees.

Lieberman may seem like a regular Joe-
- But he's irregularly righteous, as even he knows-
- A man without sin who is free to cast stones
And how regular is Saturday without answering the phones?

And Kerry's no regular guy for our times
, He's a Forbes no less and married to Heinz,
The Senator of Harvard and of MIT:
The very model, I say, of irregularity.

N0-- I am the Champion of the Regular Guy-
- I chug down that beer and eat apple pie.
I turn on the big guys with absolute fury:
I am ready now for a truly Grand Jury.
If they loved Johnnie Cochrane, they'll love Johnnie E:
Why they'll love him as much as I, too, love me.
YES, I am the Champion of the Regular Guy
And ought to be President because I'm special--that's why.

We await a rhymin' response from some equally talented Edwards supporter.

Politics

First, it chooses New York City to hold the Republican convention. Then the White House prepares to laud Massachusetts as a model for education reform. What's the world coming to? LINK

Lawyers have been told to expect a US District Court decision on the constitutionality of McConnell v. FEC (the new campaign finance law) any day now. The decision will create the framework for expedited arguments before the US Supreme Court.

Richard Cohen in the Washington Post actually works Al Gore into his argument against Democrats' use of racial politics. "Of course, Gore is no racist, and it is not even remotely possible that he ever used racially offensive speech. But for a long time he has been the personification of a Democratic Party that has found it impossible to move off the racial dime, often staying silent or complicitous when others waved the bloody shirt of ol' time racism — usually just to propel African Americans to the polls." LINK

Former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen is going to Harvard.

We're a little sensitive about computer problems, ourselves, so we'll just note that the Los Angeles Times decided to offer only one story on Gov. Gray Davis' inaugural remarks yesterday and the state's budget woes for every half-dozen e-mailed version of Davis' remarks that the Times must have received yesterday. LINK

The Washington Post 's Leibovich, whose next-day account (like many, many others) of Senator Strom Thurmond's now-infamous birthday party didn't really include mention of those now-infamous remarks by Senator Trent Lott, takes a good luck at the elaborate party that will now only be remembered for That One Thing. LINK

Owing largely to allegations of voting irregularities, the South Dakota legislature will take up election law reform. LINK

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's negotiating skills will be tested as he deals with a dispute among state Republicans about the state budget. LINK

Michael Wolff has a must-read in New York Magazine about what it means to get bad press in public life. It isn't that long, but it is really clever. LINK

He welcomes NFL executive Mark Fabiani back to our world with this graph about Al Gore: "The truth, I think, is that he is an innocent. That he really never had any idea of how to manipulate, intimidate, suck up to, and, in general, manage the media. When he ran for president, he assembled a remarkable collection of unsavvy, unskilled, non-detail-oriented people to run his media operation. They were earnest and disorganized (many times I tried to explain to them the value of returning phone calls)."

At least, that's who we THINK he meant.

Bush Administration Strategy/Personality

Sometimes The Note can see the future. We predict that tomorrow's Washington Post will contain the following correction: "A photo caption to a picture accompanying a story on the January 7 Federal Page identified the person pictured as White House aide Karl Rove, when anyone in his or her right mind knows it was a photograph of Jim Connaughton, the chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, who, truth be told, does not look as much like Mr. Rove as does Rob Tully. The Post deeply regrets the error."

(And The Note thanks the sharp-eyed, loyal, and very busy reader who pointed that out to us.)

In the actual story accompanying the photo, the Washington Post 's keen-eyed Milbank observes, "A mere 60 days after the last election, the president and his political seer have been busily assembling a Republican lineup for the next. They have been recruiting Senate candidates to run against high-profile Democratic incumbents nationwide," including in Nevada, South Dakota, and North Carolina. LINK

Milbank also mentions, in his witty and curious notebooky-type column that doesn't have subheads, an interesting account in a recent pool report. "A small group of journalists invited to tour the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, last Thursday 'limited themselves to small talk' for 90 minutes, as one of them put it, after White House officials suggested Bush might otherwise cut short the tour."

The Gang of 500 will find Todd Purdum's must-read on the partying habits of the sleepy little city of Washington in the Era of 43 to be essential reading. And The Note's 25 most loyal readers (and you know who you are) will find Oatsie's quotes (including the one about Bob Novak) to be beyond priceless. LINK

Mr. Grove has some juicy land-use details from Wayne Slater and Jim Moore's forthcoming book on Karl Rove. LINK

*And congratulations to you, Mr. Shipley; it's lovely to keep you here back East a bit longer. LINK