In the Oct. 18 cover story of Newsweek's overseas editions, "Can a Billionaire Beat Bush?" (on newsstands Monday, Oct. 11), Senior Editor Marcus Mabry examines the quest of Soros to make sure President Bush is not re-elected.

Mabry also looks at how, almost unwittingly, by virtue of his billions, his passion and his name, Soros has become the one-man vanguard of a movement.

This is Soros' first significant involvement in American electoral politics. As he tells Newsweek, for him the battle was joined when he heard President Bush address a joint session of the U.S. Congress in the weeks after Sept. 11.

Bush said, "You are either with us or against us." To Soros, a 74-year-old naturalized Hungarian-American with steely blue eyes and a demeanor belying his wealth, the absolutist rhetoric "set off alarm bells."

"[George] is allergic to absolutists," says longtime friend Leon Botstein, president of New York's Bard College and vice chairman and treasurer of Central European University, established by Soros' Open Society Institute in Budapest in 1991. "We kid him because he's convinced fallibility is right."

Critics charge that it's Soros and a troop of like-minded millionaires and billionaires who are threatening to unhinge the future of American democracy.

"George Soros has purchased the Democratic Party," says Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson. "It makes George Soros very influential, [but] it also makes John Kerry very beholden to him." Democrats counter that they're just taking a page from the Republican handbook, using money not only to stop Bush but also to resuscitate the American left.

In the early summer of 2003, Soros called on the best minds of the political left. He had two questions: Can Bush be beaten? And if so, what would it take?

"This was very much the approach of an investor," remembers Washington-based political consultant Mark Steitz. "What can I expect? What are the risks? It was ... [how] somebody might approach investing in a start-up business."

Steitz and lobbyist Tom Novick made a presentation on July 19 to a group of Democratic donors, including Soros. "We concluded that Bush was far more beatable than was assumed at that time," Steitz tells Newsweek. "What was also clear was that if we ran the campaigns the way we had in the past we would be wasting an opportunity."

It's not clear how much of an effect any billionaire's money, even George Soros', can have on the election itself, Mabry reports.

So far Soros has not reached many of the undecided or moderate Republicans he was hoping to reach.

His meetings with editorial boards and clubs of Americans interested in foreign policy – such as the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia last Wednesday – have been little more than preaching to the converted.

Often his requests to address swing-state audiences have been rejected – usually because organizations consider his message too partisan or controversial. For Soros, that's all the proof he needs that his efforts are more needed than ever.

"The country is in the grips of an extremist ideology ... [where] disagreement is not tolerated," he says. "Open society is always endangered. And the people in these societies must reaffirm those values for open society to survive. If Bush is re-elected, we fail the test because we [would have allowed] ourselves to be misled."

Editor's note: