Last night, from the heart of the Texas State House, Texas Gov. George W. Bush earnestly accepted the monumental task facing him.

Bush's career before this moment has been a study in contrasts. Throughout his life, the president-elect, who still proudly recounts his days growing up in Midland, Texas, has consistently mixed his Texan background with his elite Eastern pedigree.

In his first political race in 1978, running for Congress in Midland, he was roundly attacked for being an Eastern carpetbagger.

Since then he has tried to leave his top-flight academic grooming at Andover, Yale and Harvard merely on his resume, and tried his hand at Texan enterprises from oil to baseball.

But even as he toiled unsuccessfully in West Texas oilfields, he could not escape the political heritage of his family. In 1988, with his father in the midst of a presidential race, Bush returned to the political stage and was devastated by his father's defeat four years later.

Two years into the Clinton administration, Bush, never considered to have true political potential, ran for the Texas governorship as an underdog--and won. And with a Republican Party searching desperately for a candidate to successfully rally around in the 2000 presidential race, Bush again surprised his doubters.

Facing the formidable experience of Vice President Al Gore '69 and an election that easily could have prevailed against him, Bush clearly emerged last night as the unquestioned president-elect. But it was a triumph that, even a few years ago, his closest supporters could only have dreamed of.

A Midland Man Goes East