ORLANDO, Fla. -- Move over, Kennedys. A new American dynasty is about to emerge.

Down in Texas, Gov. George W. Bush is considered a mortal lock for re-election next week and the front-runner for his party's presidential nomination in 2000.

Younger brother Jeb Bush, meantime, seems headed for victory in the Florida governor's contest.

Come January, if the polls are right, 35 million people will again be living under a Bush first family, just six years after the nation's voters dumped George and Barbara for that couple from Arkansas.

Call it coincidence, a swing of the pendulum or a deliberate scheme. In any case, the result is the same: the revenge of the Bushes.

When George W. Bush sets his face a certain way -- lips pressed in a tight line that dips slightly at one end, halfway between a grimace and a frown -- he's a dead ringer for his dad.

That inherited look projects a resolute air, a hint of toughness. This is the man, after all, who once did hatchet duty in the Bush White House, telling the president's prickly chief of staff, John H. Sununu, that it was time to hit the road.

When the governor of Texas opens his mouth, he occasionally lapses into "Bushspeak," the staccato shorthand of sentence fragments for which his father is known. But his voice reflects his upbringing in the Texas cities of Midland and Houston. It's a genuine twang the elder Bush never developed.

A decade ago, after a lifetime of moves that tracked his father's (prep school at Andover, college at Yale, a race for Congress in Texas, a fling in the oil business), Bush broke away. He spent five years as managing general partner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. Then he leveraged that high-profile job into a successful run for governor in 1994.

'Like a Jack Kennedy'

Today, he's the most popular politician in the nation's second-largest state. Handsome, energetic and intense, he's reaching beyond the Republican suburbs for votes, into the barrios of San Antonio and other Democratic strongholds.

"He connects with people like a Jack Kennedy," said Lionel Sosa, a Bush media adviser. "They just love to touch him."

At 52, he is well-positioned to try to emulate John Quincy Adams, the only president's son to rise to that office. He'll make up his mind, he said, by early next year. The decision will revolve around whether he wants to put his 16-year-old twin daughters and his wife, Laura, through the scrutiny of life "in the bubble."

To deflect inevitable questions about his personal life, Bush has confessed to "youthful indiscretions," saying he drank too much and lived too fast during college and for a time afterward, but won't go into specifics. He does say that he's been faithful to his wife and that one too many mornings-after made him give up drinking for good at age 40.

"When you uncover some act of a fraternity boy, I'm going to say, 'Did it.' As I said, I've been irresponsible. I'm not trying to play like I'm anything other than a human being who went to Yale and enjoyed himself," he said.

Speculation that something in his past might keep him from entering the race for president spread last month after Bush told an Austin newspaper that the Monica Lewinsky scandal "has been a very depressing time for me."

He made that remark in response to a question about the factors that might influence his decision whether to run, but he insists there's nothing to the speculation. At the same time, he's resigned to more whispering from the political gossip mill.

"You can't nail the rumors coming out of Washington. I mean, I've never seen anything like it. You talk about Rumor Mill City. Stuff is filtering its way down here about me, my wife, my family," he said in an interview.

"A rumor's a rumor. I know the truth. And by the way, the truth has been sought after a lot since I've been in public life. If there's something major out there," it would have come out by now, he said.

If he runs, Bush expects embarrassing incidents to be unearthed from his younger days. But he said he's more concerned about the dumbing-down of public discourse than about his own ambitions.

Journalists, Bush said, should be asking baby-boomer candidates like himself the question, "Have you grown up?" Not, "Were you irresponsible?" but, "Are you mature now?"

"Otherwise, not many baby boomers are going to pass the early smell test," he said. "And that's reality."

As governor, Bush has enjoyed extraordinarily good relations with the Democratic-run Legislature. As a presidential candidate, he would offer himself as an antidote to the poisonous partisanship in Washington.

"The questions that anybody who would think about the presidency is going to ask are: 'Can an administration change the tone? Can one administration make a difference in the atmosphere?' " he said.

He deplores the capital's "I win, you lose" dynamic, which some trace to the 1988 election, when the late Lee Atwater, a Bush campaign strategist, showed how effective negative campaign tactics could be.

"Zero-sum politics doesn't interest me," the governor said.

His brother's equal

"I know I don't fit the box," Jeb Bush said, leaning back in the passenger's seat as his campaign van heads up the Interstate 4 corridor from Tampa to Orlando.

He's an Episcopalian who converted to Catholicism, the scion of a privileged American family who married a working-class Mexican girl, a Texan who migrated to Florida, a president's son who converses with his wife in fluent Spanish. He's never cared much for Washington and eschewed the Ivy League in favor of the University of Texas.

He is also every bit his brother's equal as a politician. Jeb plays Bobby Kennedy to George W.'s JFK (though, for the record, the Bushes categorically reject comparisons to the Kennedy clan). He founded an all-black charter school in a Miami ghetto. He's met with migrant farm workers.

The humbling failure of his 1994 candidacy for governor "made him very sensitive to a lot of people that the world forgets," said Jim Towey, a prominent Florida Democrat who was Mother Teresa's U.S. lawyer and has become a close friend of Jeb's.

"I think my faith is stronger now," said Bush, pulling from his wallet a woven wristband given to him by a supporter. "WWJD," it said. What Would Jesus Do? It's a question he said he asks himself before making "all sorts of decisions."

'The vision thing'

George and Barbara's 45-year-old second son discusses ideas in ways that others in his family seldom do. He sprinkles conversations with concepts like "a civil society," the sort of airy talk his pragmatic, action-oriented father and brother seem to shy away from.

No less an expert than Barbara Bush said Jeb has got "the vision thing" that eluded her husband. "He had a great vision for America," she said of the former president, "but he couldn't articulate it as well as Jeb can."

If George is his father's body double, outwardly, Jeb is his mother's boy. When he smiles, it's his mother's grin that voters see.

"I've got the Barbara Bush gene," Jeb told a crowd at Sun City retirement village in Hillsborough, referring to his mother's charitable works. The remark prompted the former first lady, who was seated in the front row, to turn to her daughter, Dorothy, and make a wisecrack about weight.

At 6-foot-4 and more than 200 pounds, Jeb Bush lacks the "frenetic energy" and what he calls the "thin gene" his wiry older brother inherited from their father.

As a candidate, George W. is as ferocious as they come. When he attacked his Democratic challenger in a recent debate -- despite leading by nearly 50 points in the polls -- other members of the family could only chuckle. That's George. Take no prisoners.

The Texas governor regards his opponent as his "enemy."

By contrast, Jeb said: "I don't view this as war. I view this campaign as a joyful culmination of a lot of hard work, a lot of fun."

The Bush formula

"They got their brains from their father and their mouth from their mother," said Barbara Bush, borrowing one of her eldest son's lines.

They may be very different personalities, but as politicians the Bush brothers are fraternal twins. Their formula has three basic elements: a nice-guy image, a famous name and probably the best fund-raising network in American politics.

In private, each can be thin-skinned and impatient. Each has faced questions about his business dealings and allegations that he traded on his father's name to make money. Neither has been accused of anything illegal.

This fall, they are going beyond the Republican base, appealing to minority voters (in their own tongue, in the case of Latinos). To shed the reputation for intolerance that has hurt Republicans -- including their father -- in recent national elections, they are promoting their version of what George W. calls "compassionate conservatism."

The Bush brothers are campaigning on the basic themes that Republicans have advocated since the dawn of the Reagan-Bush era -- lower taxes, less government, regulatory reform, crackdowns on illegal drugs and crime. But they are adding priorities of their own. Both, for instance, have aired TV commercials calling for higher standards in public education and an end to social promotion for students who are failing.

They deny coordinating campaign efforts, though Jeb said, "We talk pretty regularly."

And like their father, the brothers aren't ashamed to draw when necessary on their family's most cherished political asset, Barbara Bush's undiminished popularity.

Immediately after the only debate of the Texas campaign, a reporter asked George W. which candidate had come out ahead.

"I think I won. More importantly, my mother thinks I won," he quipped.

As it turns out, Bush hadn't had an opportunity to speak with his mother. She wasn't even in the country at the time and missed the debate.

Getting even, quietly

"Don't get mad -- get even," Joseph P. Kennedy used to tell his sons.

If the Bush brothers are motivated by such sentiments, they would be the last to admit it. Indeed, they are careful to dispel any suggestion that they are out to avenge the 1992 election.

The former president has set the tone for the family, largely avoiding comment on his successor's potential impeachment. His sons have generally followed suit, though sometimes it must be difficult for them not to gloat when they think about what might lie ahead, especially with early polls showing George W. leading Vice President Al Gore, the likely Democratic nominee in 2000.

Recently, the governor was recalling a conversation with his wife about a report in the Dallas newspaper about the slowing national economy and new layoffs. From his perspective, his father never got the credit he deserved for the economic recovery that was under way during the 1992 election.

"I said, 'Honey, I gotta tell you something. The irony of what we " The governor interrupted himself, then shifted gears, perhaps to avoid getting too explicit about certain subjects.

"I was going to say," Bush continued, "Clinton inherits the platform for a good economy. Leaves one in shambles. Could be."

Could be, too, that a contender named Bush finds himself able to turn the Clinton recipe for victory against the Democrats in the race for president in 2000.

John Ellis Bush

Residence: Miami

Age: 45

Family: Married (Columba) with two sons (22 and 14), one daughter (21)

Religion: Raised Episcopalian, now Catholic

Education: University of Texas

What everyone calls him: Jeb (his initials)

Midlife change: Converted to Catholicism after losing 1994 governor's race

Major-league investment: Was an owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars (football)

Net worth: $2 million

George Walker Bush

Residence: Austin, Texas

Age: 52

Family: Married (Laura) with twin daughters (16)

Religion: Raised Episcopalian, now United Methodist

Education: Yale University, Harvard Business School

What insiders call him: W

Midlife change: Gave up alcohol after his 40th birthday

Major-league investment: Was an owner of the Texas Rangers (baseball)

Net worth: $14 million

Pub Date: 10/26/98