*Bush Reaches City, Accepting Firefighters' Endorsement in Queens
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: September 2, 2004
resident Bush swept into New York for the Republican convention last night through the modest portal of a community center in Queens, where he met with more than 100 New York City firefighters and several widows of those who died in the Sept. 11 attacks.
His arrival capped a weeklong parade through swing states toward his acceptance speech today. After landing on Air Force One at Kennedy International Airport, Mr. Bush made his way by motorcade to the Italian Charities of America Hall on Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst. There the president was endorsed by New York City's main firefighters' union, the Uniformed Firefighters Association - a particularly significant endorsement in a city where firefighters perished in the hundreds in the twin towers.
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The president's entrance into the convention city via the multiethnic, working class neighborhood of Elmhurst was carefully staged by his re-election campaign and designed to showcase Mr. Bush as both a man of the people and the commander in chief who stood by the city in the days when parts of lower Manhattan lay in ruins.
Firefighters chanted "four more years" when Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura, arrived and Mr. Bush called the union's endorsement especially meaningful "because the truth of the matter is, the inspiration I received from the firefighters on that site is something I'll never forget."
"To see the courage and compassion and decency of our fellow Americans during an incredible time of stress has shaped my thinking about the future of this country," said Mr. Bush, who stayed at the hall for about an hour.
Large-screen television sets were set up on the second floor so Mr. Bush and the firefighters could watch the convention. Soon after the president arrived, more than 40 demonstrators began chanting anti-Bush slogans and holding up signs outside. The police had confined them behind wooden barricades about a block away.
Their numbers were dwarfed by the merely curious, who also pressed up against the barricades but were allowed a little bit closer.
"I'm surprised there are so little protests," said Albert Leusink, a musician who had biked over from Woodside.
The White House appeared to be walking a fine line between saluting the firefighters for their heroism and exploiting the tableau for Mr. Bush's campaign.
Reporters, who had been alerted to the event by White House officials, were nonetheless kept outside the convention hall; only a small pool of White House correspondents was permitted inside as the president mingled with the firefighters, and then only for a few minutes.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said he was too busy to attend. "I can't be at every place the president goes," he said. "I've got a number of things to do tonight."
In endorsing Mr. Bush, the firefighters' union, which has 8,700 members and has been in a contract dispute with the mayor, was breaking with its parent union and most other labor groups in the nation. A year ago, the nation's main firefighters' union, the 260,000-member International Association of Firefighters, became the first large union to endorse Mr. Kerry.
Mr. Bush arrived in New York after a rock-concert-like campaign rally of close to 20,000 people at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio. The darkened hockey arena, the home of the Blue Jackets, throbbed with rock music as strobe lights flashed just before Mr. Bush took his place on the stage.
"I'm here to ask for the vote," Mr. Bush told the cheering crowd. "See, I believe you got to come to the people." Mr. Bush asked the crowd to register to vote and to sign up their friends and neighbors as well. "You can't win an election alone," he said.
Previewing what he said would be a theme of his acceptance speech on Thursday night, Mr. Bush turned to national security and cast himself as the best person to protect America over the next four years.
"The world changed on a terrible September morning, and since that day we have changed the world," Mr. Bush said.
He then went into a explanation of his decision to go after Saddam Hussein, which never fails to elicit huge cheers from Republican crowds.
"So I had a choice to make at this point in our history," he said. "Do I forget the lessons of Sept. 11 and take the word of a madman? Or do I take actions to defend the United States? Given that choice, I will defend America every time."
Mr. Bush said again that he had no regrets about going to war with Iraq, despite the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were the administration's stated reason for war.
"Even though we did not find the stockpiles we expected to find, Saddam Hussein had the capability of making weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Bush said. "And he could have passed that capability on to the enemy. And that was not a risk we could afford to take after Sept. 11. Knowing what I know today, I would have made the same decision. America and the world are safer off with Saddam Hussein sitting in a prison cell."
White House officials said that Mr. Bush rehearsed his convention speech for two hours on a teleprompter at the White House before leaving for Ohio, and that the speech was by and large finished. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, termed it "optimistic and forward looking."
Mr. Bush is to spend today in New York, at a suite in the Waldorf-Astoria, before delivering his acceptance speech.
He is to leave immediately afterward for Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where he will be positioned for two days of campaigning in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin.
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