Bush is letting his "Texas" hang out. The reporter her bias.
WHITE HOUSE LETTER - NYT
Before Friendly Audiences on the Trail, a Looser, Livelier Bush Appears
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
ASHINGTON
George W. Bush says he enjoys being president. But judging from his performance on the stump over the last few weeks, he enjoys campaigning for president even more.
From rallies in Ohio to attacks on Senator John Kerry's economic record in Pennsylvania to "Ask President Bush'' events with rapturous Republican crowds, the president has emerged as a kinetic stage performer with a personality that seems to fits the frantic quality of the campaign.
In Washington, Mr. Bush delivers serious speeches, tangles with the press and can appear stolid, defensive and halting. But on the campaign trail, where the invited crowds are kept friendly because opponents are sometimes arrested for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts or dragged from events by their hair, there is a different President Bush. He is looser and livelier, a former Andover cheerleader who has learned how to rouse the crowd in the argot of ordinary America.
"So I'm here asking for the vote, see,'' Mr. Bush said at a recent invitation-only "Ask President Bush'' event in Nashua, N.H., where he paced happily in his shirtsleeves, microphone in hand, in the middle of a packed high school gymnasium. "That's what you've got to do. I think you've got to get out amongst the people and say, 'I want your vote.' "
The line is Mr. Bush's standard opener, a kind of lead paragraph that instantly telegraphs his message, connects him to the crowd, then allows him to transition into a plea that gets applause: "And I'm also here to ask for your help. See, I don't think you can win elections alone. I think it requires citizens who are willing to register people to vote, to put up the signs, to turn out the vote. And that's what I'm here to ask you to do. I'd like your help as we're coming down the stretch.''
Of course, voters who dislike Mr. Bush hardly find his act compelling; to them it is just that, an act.
"I wish he was half as good a president as he is a campaigner,'' said Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, a former top aide to President Bill Clinton.
But there is no disputing the president's enthusiasm for this part of his job, particularly now that polls show him leading, and the way the invited crowds lap up his colloquialisms, malapropisms and Texas twang. (It intensifies west of the Mississippi.)
There is also no disputing that Mr. Bush can falter in front of more skeptical audiences, as he did at a convention of minority journalists in Washington last month.
The president got so twisted up in response to a question about tribal sovereignty - "tribal sovereignty means that it's sovereign'' - that the crowd started laughing at him.
In short, Mr. Bush is at his best in front of the adoring crowds his campaign has arranged for him in the swing states.
"O.K., I'm going to appear to be sophisticated, but I'm a wreck,'' a woman said before she asked Mr. Bush a question at the event in New Hampshire.
Mr. Bush laughed appreciatively. "That's what I try to do, too - I try to be sophisticated,'' he said, to big guffaws from the crowd. "I have trouble pulling if off, though, you know?"
Encouraged, the woman plunged ahead. "I do want to say it's an honor to be here today to meet you, Mr. President,'' she said. "O.K., and New Hampshire chicks love you. I got to say that.''
Mr. Bush laughed again. "So far you haven't acted very sophisticated, I admit, you know?'' he teased. Then he gave the woman a big smile, she beamed back, and the crowd laughed again.
Even some Democrats begrudgingly give Mr. Bush good marks for his style on the stump.
"He doesn't have the stamina of a Clinton or the charisma of a Reagan, but when he's on his game, and he's not tired, he has a folksy, down-home approach that works for him,'' said Paul Begala, the CNN talk show host who worked in the White House for Bill Clinton and is now informally advising Mr. Kerry's campaign.
When Mr. Bush is tired, strange things do come out of his mouth.
Last Monday at a rally in Poplar Bluff, Mo., the president was into his usual riff against malpractice lawsuits when he said, without missing a beat, that "too many Ob-gyns aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country'' - an apparent crossed wire with the president's stump speech to religious groups, in which he invariably says that government cannot put love in a person's heart.
The day before, in Parkersburg, W.Va., Mr. Bush said that he asked Congress last September for $87 billion to help pay for "armor and body parts'' in Afghanistan and Washington.
And two days before that, the president mangled a favorite line about Mr. Kerry and the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Senator John Edwards, who were two of four senators to vote for the use of force in Iraq but against the $87 billion spending package.
"Two of those four,'' Mr. Bush cheerily concluded, "are my running mate and his opponent.''
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
