Since Saturday I have been meeting with President Bush’s top political operatives at breakfasts and lunches the Monitor organizes for political officials and print reporters to get together.

Visitors so far at these sessions at the Republican National Convention in New York have included campaign chairman Marc Racicot, campaign manager Ken Mehlman, deputy manager Mark Wallace, chief campaign strategist Matthew Dowd, campaign communications director Nicolle Devenish, and Republican Party Chairman Ed Gillespie.

Much of the conversation at the hour-long sessions at a hotel here is about the news of the day. The Monitor’s political reporters – Liz Marlantes and Linda Feldmann – use the best quotes from our breakfasts and lunches in Monitor stories about the convention.

So what is left – other than trouble fitting into my clothes – after the meals have been consumed and the newsy quotes have been mined for our daily coverage?

Two impressions linger. First, the Bush team is impressively disciplined in sticking to their daily talking points. Top members of the Bush team meet every morning at the convention to plan their “rapid response” to the day’s news. So the message discipline should be no surprise.

And that leads to my other impression, which is how the character of several top Bush campaign officials differs from the stereotypical view of Republican political operatives as either humor- or compassion- impaired.

We started with lunch on Saturday with Marc Racicot, the chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign. Racicot, who formerly was Montana’s attorney general and later its governor, is the softest-spoken, most gentle political operative I have met since returning to Washington in 2001.

Racicot’s demeanor may have something to do with the home in which he was raised. Racicot’s mother and dad served as foster parents to nearly 50 children while he was growing up. His folks formally adopted two foster children to add to a family that already included the five biological children of their own.

Chairman Racicot, the father of five with his wife, Theresa, speaks warmly of his mother “ My mom was a real feminist before that was popular so we learned how to iron, to change babies, to feed babies. It was kind of an assembly line. We loved it.”

He strongly denies there is any contradiction between this caring background and Republican economic policies he spends his days defending. “The caring that I feel has everything to do with why it is that I feel as much affection and loyalty and dedication to the president as I do. And that is very real and very sincere… compassionate conservatism is not a slogan, it is a governing philosophy and I believe the conservative principles of the president have been transformed into compassionate application,” the chairman says.

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, our guest for Sunday lunch, is skilled at the rapid-fire dispensing of fact-based, humorous sound bites that skewer the Democrats. While possessed of sharper political elbows than Racicot, there was a wonderful moment when Gillespie was asked about immigration and responded with some emotion by recalling his dad.

“My father came here on a boat with nothing but the clothes on his back. He came through Ellis Island. He worked in a number of jobs that people call menial... I call them hard and honorable. What a country. [And now] I get to be chairman of the Republican National Committee. It’s great.”

The most informal member of the Bush team to visit with us was the president’s chief campaign strategist, Matthew Dowd. He showed up for breakfast in a green sports shirt, blue jeans, boots, and tan sports coat. The balding Dowd, the father of four, has an impish sense of humor. When asked if he wanted to make opening remarks, Dowd looked playfully at campaign manager Ken Mehlman and said, “I’d like to talk about Ken for a minute.”

Asked about the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll that showed the president regaining his national security edge over Kerry, Dowd said, “I was heartened by it because it looked like any lift that Kerry got at the convention was smaller than anybody has had before, and more short-lived than anyone has had before, which I think is a reflection of what they didn’t do at the convention or what the American public didn’t hear, which is basically news about him that they didn’t already know.”

Of course, humor can also be used to deflect a question.

I asked campaign chairman Ken Mehlman about a front-page story in Tuesday’s New York Times noting the powerful Akin Gump law firm held a party in his honor last night. The Times story called the gathering “a whole new event for political high jumping.” The Center for Responsive Politics was quoted in the story saying the party was “clearly part of the influence peddling that goes on at the convention. Privately financed parties and private parties are used to cement relations with the administration.”

In full disclosure I told Mehlman that the idea of holding Monitor breakfasts at political conventions came from Akin Gump founding partner Robert Strauss. Strauss offered up the idea to my colleague Godfrey Sperling at a Washington breakfast. And so it was that on July 11, 1976 that Strauss met with Monitor breakfast group at the Democratic convention in New York. Our records indicate that Strauss even paid for that first Monitor convention breakfast. (Reporters are now billed for their breakfasts.)

Mehlman’s response:

“On behalf of Akin Gump, I want to apologize that they did not pay for this breakfast. I’ll make a major disclosure. I am a recovering lawyer. I practiced law with Akin Gump from 1991 to 1994. They had a little party last night in my honor and it was a lot of fun… One of the great things about Akin Gump is that it is a place that upholds the highest standards of ethics and one of the great things about the Bush campaign is that we do the same thing.”

More later.