[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Bush Promises to Offer Detailed Plans at Convention

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Bush Promises to Offer Detailed Plans at Convention

August 22, 2004
 By ADAM NAGOURNEY 



 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 - President Bush will present what
aides say will be a detailed second-term agenda when he is
nominated in New York in 10 days, part of an ambitious
convention program built on invocations of Sept. 11 and
efforts to paint Senator John Kerry as untrustworthy and
out of the mainstream. 

Mr. Bush's advisers said they were girding for the most
extensive street demonstrations at any political convention
since the Democrats nominated Hubert H. Humphrey in Chicago
in 1968. But in contrast to that convention, which was
severely undermined by televised displays of street
rioting, Republicans said they would seek to turn any
disruptions to their advantage, by portraying protests by
even independent activists as Democratic-sanctioned
displays of disrespect for a sitting president. 

And after months in which Mr. Bush stressed issues of
concern to conservative supporters - from restrictions on
stem cell research to a constitutional amendment to bar gay
marriage - the convention will offer its national
television audience a decidedly more moderate face for the
president and his party. If "strength" was the leitmotif of
the Democratic convention in Boston, "compassion" will be
the theme in New York, marking the return of a mainstay of
Mr. Bush's 2000 campaign, party leaders said. 

Senator Zell Miller, a Democrat from Georgia who has become
increasingly estranged from his party, will lead a
prime-time televised lineup of speakers as notable for who
is not there (conservative Republican leaders) as for who
is (Mr. Miller and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the moderate
Republican governor of California). And Republicans are
pressing for a quick and quiet adoption of a platform to
minimize dissent over issues that have divided the party,
in particular immigration restrictions and a constitutional
amendment banning gay marriage. 

Most of all, Mr. Bush's aides said that after five months
in which they have focused almost exclusively on attacking
Mr. Kerry, the president will use his speech to offer what
they asserted would be expansive plans for a second term,
in an effort to underline what they argued was Mr. Kerry's
failure to talk about the future at his own convention. 

"This speech has to lay out a forward-looking, positive
prospective agenda," said Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's senior
political adviser. "It has to show - and to defend in a way
the American people want to hear - his policies on the war
on terror." 

Mr. Bush's advisers offered no details on what he might
propose, and even some Republicans said the White House
might be constrained both by the deficit and resistance
among Republicans on spending. 

Still, Ed Gillespie, the national Republican chairman and a
senior Bush campaign adviser, argued that Mr. Kerry had
missed an opportunity at his convention by spending too
much time talking about his biography and Mr. Bush,
reflecting Mr. Kerry's effort to use his convention to
present himself as strong enough to carry the nation
through a time of war. 

"They left people feeling hungry for substance," Mr.
Gillespie said. "We will not make that mistake in New York.
We will come out of there with specific proposals for the
future for a new term." 

The emerging goals for the four days in New York signal
that this White House has adopted an ambitious political
agenda for a nominating convention that Republicans
describe as a critical moment for Mr. Bush's campaign. It
comes as many Republicans have grown increasingly worried
about Mr. Bush's prospects for re-election, with some
saying the campaign appears uncertain as it seeks to knock
back a challenge from Mr. Kerry, a candidate many
Republicans describe as less than overwhelming. 

"If they were running against a Bill Clinton, governor of
Arkansas, nominee, they'd be down 10 points,'' said one
Republican strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity
to avoid being accused by fellow Republicans of disloyalty.
"But they're not. They have the advantage of running
against a guy who is basically a liberal from
Massachusetts." 

To a large extent, Mr. Bush's aides said, they were
orchestrating a convention that would be as much about
celebrating the nation and what they portray as its success
at weathering the attacks of Sept. 11 as it would be
talking about Mr. Bush's tenure. In doing that, the aides
said, they were seeking to turn around the damaging
perception among many Americans that the country is heading
in the wrong direction, in the calculation that renewed
confidence about the future would translate into support
for Mr. Bush. 

A CBS News poll this week found that 53 percent of
registered voters felt the nation was heading in the wrong
direction, a dangerously high number for an incumbent. 

For all the ambitions expressed by the White House for this
convention, Democrats and even some Republicans expressed
skepticism that Mr. Bush would in fact be able to lay out
the kind of dramatic or ground-breaking second-term agenda
that his aides are promising. In 1996, for example,
President Bill Clinton used a succession of what his own
aides described as small-bore ideas - such as requiring
school uniforms - as a way of creating the perception that
he was offering a grand plan for a second term, and some
Democrats suggested that Mr. Bush might be about to do the
same thing. 

"They did work - they filled the policy void and allowed
him to seem on the offense,'' said Scott Reed, who was the
campaign manager for Mr. Clinton's opponent that year, Bob
Dole. "It looked like he was doing something.'' 

Mr. Bush, like Mr. Clinton, has the constraint of having
been in office for four years, and many of his ideas are
well-known to Americans. 

At his acceptance speech in 2000, Mr. Bush pledged to
implement sweeping tax cuts, and reforms to the public
school system, Social Security and Medicare. But that
speech was delivered at a time of relative economic
prosperity and government surplus. This time, Mr. Bush is
hampered by budgetary restrictions caused by the deficit,
the war in Iraq and revenue losses from the tax cuts. Some
Republicans, while saying they wanted Mr. Bush to lay out
new ideas for the second term, warned against significant
new spending, saying that might scare off the very voters
Mr. Bush needs to win over. 

Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, said
independent voters in his state - one of the top five
targets of Mr. Bush this year - were concerned about the
deficit, and put off by what he described as pork barrel
spending by Congress and Mr. Bush's proposal to finance a
mission to Mars. 

"The voter you could define as a Reagan Democrat votes both
sides of the ticket - and that person is a pretty
conservative person,'' Mr. Ryan said. "They see waste like
that, they see spending like that, and it bothers them.
Those are the people who he needs to win Wisconsin." 

Mr. Kerry's communications director, Stephanie Cutter,
disputed Republican claims that Mr. Kerry did not talk
enough about the future at his convention, and scoffed at
the idea that Mr. Bush would have much new to say at his
convention. 

"People have been hungry for substance over the past four
years because of the president's failure to put forth a
domestic agenda and pay attention to the home front,'' she
said. "They can talk about substance all they want at the
convention, but the American people won't be fooled." 

Mr. Bush's aides declined to provide details of what the
president would say, other than to say he was likely to lay
out plans dealing with health care and probably tax reform.
But they claim that his agenda would be more sweeping and
ambitious than the modest scale initiatives that Mr.
Clinton rolled out when he ran for re-election in 1996. 

Mr. Bush's advisers said the perceptions of the success of
the convention would be set as much by what happened on the
stages of Madison Square Garden as what happens outside -
be it the demonstrations on the streets of New York or the
reminders of the World Trade Center attack that led the
White House to decide to hold the first Republican
convention in New York in history. 

With thousands of demonstrators coming to New York, Mr.
Bush's aides said they expected competition for attention
but said that posed more of a risk for Democrats than for
Republicans. Even though Democrats are not involved in
organizing the protests, some of the participants are
almost certain to be aligned with traditionally Democratic
groups, like labor and environmentalists, and Republicans
made clear they would seek to link Mr. Kerry and the
Democratic Party to any disorder. 

"I think the Democrats are going to have to be careful
about not letting the protesters get out of hand," Mr.
Gillespie said. "The line between the official Democratic
Party and labor protesters, environmental protesters and
antiwar protesters is fairly blurry, and I'm not sure they
want to have Democrats engaging in violence in New York
against our convention. It would seem disrespectful and
antidemocratic." 

Another senior convention organizer said: "You know the
protesters are going to be here. You know you're going to
have a full story. I look at that as a wave: not a wave to
stand in front of, but a wave you have got to ride." 

Ms. Cutter said the Democratic Party was not involved in
any demonstrations, and blamed them on Mr. Bush. 

"This president has spent the last four years dividing
people and never taking responsibility for his failed
record and its impact on average Americans," she said. "Any
protests that might take place will likely reflect that." 

Mr. Bush's aides said the president would not back away
from recalling the attacks of Sept. 11 in drawing a
contrast with Mr. Kerry. Mr. Bush is not planning to visit
ground zero while he is in New York, but an aide said the
events of Sept. 11 would provide an emotional fulcrum for
his nomination speech. Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former
mayor, is welcoming the delegates to New York on Aug. 30
with a speech devoted almost entirely to the events of that
day, an aide said. 

Bush aides said any concern they had about being accused of
exploiting the issue had disappeared when Democrats
included a tribute to victims of the attack at their
convention in Boston. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/politics/campaign/22repubs.html?ex=1094199191&ei=1&en=951b4d776fdd21d2


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