Aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln ? President Bush didn’t have to make a dramatic tailhook landing on this aircraft carrier. He could have flown here on a helicopter as presidents normally would, the White House said Friday.

Officials also acknowledged positioning the massive ship to provide the best TV angle for Bush’s speech, with the vast sea as his background instead of the very visible San Diego coastline.

Bush’s aides were delighted by the saturation television coverage and front-page pictures of Bush’s visit Thursday to this ship homebound from the Persian Gulf. Press secretary Ari Fleischer dismissed any suggestion that the overnight trip was custom-ordered to provide campaign footage for Bush’s re-election campaign.

“This is not about the president. This is about thanking the men and women who won a war,” he said.

Fleischer had said last week that Bush would have to fly out to the carrier by plane because the Lincoln would be hundreds of miles offshore, making helicopter travel impractical.

As it turned out, the ship was just 39 miles from the coast when Bush scored a presidential first by landing on the flight deck in a small S-3B Viking jet that was snared by a restraining wire. He climbed out of the cockpit wearing a flight suit and carrying a helmet under his arm, and was swarmed by crew members. The scene was captured on live television and replayed again and again.

“He could have helicoptered, but the plan was already in place,” Fleischer said. “Plus, he wanted to see a landing the way aviators see a landing.”

Navy officials said they made minor changes to the Lincoln’s route home to accommodate the president. The changes did not keep personnel at sea longer than they otherwise would have been, said John Daniels, a ship spokesman.

President Bush gets a tour of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the California coast. Bush's landing Thursday on the carrier was a carefully staged bit of political drama.

In fact, the Abraham Lincoln was scheduled at one time to arrive in San Diego on Saturday, but that was moved up to accommodate Bush’s schedule, said Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Bender. The carrier arrived Friday.

There was no denying the ship’s movements were carefully choreographed to benefit Bush. Commanders gauged the wind and glided along at precisely that speed so that sea breezes would not blow across the ship during Bush’s speech. That could create unwanted noise, Daniels said.

The camera angle also was arranged by the White House to ensure it did not show the nearby coastline. A huge banner reading “Mission Accomplished” was strung along the bridge and loomed behind Bush.

Historian Douglas Brinkley said Bush’s aircraft carrier moment was a “trophy” and a time for “breast beating” for the victorious war president. Even if the situation in Iraq remains far from orderly, Bush, after the obvious military triumph, “becomes part of a small, exclusive class of presidents who have won a war,” Brinkley said. “It’ll be in his biography, a moment of sweet triumph.”

Even before that biography is written, Bush’s carrier visit may appear somewhere else: 2004 campaign footage. Brinkley called it “the opening salvo for his presidential campaign.”