Politics

Bush Bids Farewell To Texas

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 17, 2001 / 1:27 PM EST / CBS

In his last stop before heading to Washington for his inauguration, President-elect Bush bid farewell to his boyhood hometown Wednesday, vowing "I am going to take a lot of Midland and a lot of Texas with me."

Carrying a white cowboy hat, his wife Laura clutching a small U.S. flag, the president-elect celebrated the virtues of the dusty town where he grew up and got his start in the oil business, and the crowd at his rally celebrated him with their roars.

"Our deepest values in life often come from our earliest years," he said. "It is here in Midland and in West Texas where I learned to respect people from different backgrounds. It is here where I learned what it means to be a good neighbor. ... It is here in West Texas where I learned to trust in God."

Previewing a call to unity to be featured in his inaugural speech Saturday, Bush said he would work hard to put Washington's culture of division behind.

"The spirit of respect and common purpose will guide me as your president," Bush said, noting he learned "respectful ways" in Midland.

His Midland rally marked his last act in Texas as a private citizen. Bush stepped down as governor Dec. 21 after his victory over Democrat Al Gore in the disputed presidential election was settled.

Bush's call for unity will be put to the test with a Senate divided 50-50 by party and with a House with a bare Republican majority.

Speaking beyond the Texans in front of him, Bush told the nation, "I promise my administration will not forget the dignity and duty the White House represents to millions of Americans."

"Any conflicts that once divided us now belong to history," he said. Turning close to home, he said: "We're all Texans and we're all Americans. Our respect for each other is the greatest strength we have as a state."

Even as he spoke of unity, a Senate committee carried on its hearings over Bush's contentious choice of former Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., for attorney general. Four other Cabinet nominees also were going through their confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill.

A struggle was also forming over Bush's $1.6 trillion 10-year tax cut plan. The Republican Leadership Council, a centrist GOP group, was beginning two weeks of supportive TV ads in two states that voted for Bush but have Democratic senators who serve on the powerful Finance Committee. The ads, running statewide in North Dakota and Montana, are aimed at Sens. Kent Conrad and Max Baucus, respectively.

In a cold rain, Bush and his wife, Laura, had boarded an Air Force version of a Boeing 757 at the airport in Waco, near the ranch that has been his Texas home since he left the governor's mansion in Austin earlier this month, for the flight to Midland.

It was the first time he had traveled as president-elect on a government plane. Bush was sheltered from the rain by an Air Force steward with an umbrella a new per of the office he is about to assume.

After his arrival in the nation's capital Wednesday evening, Bush planned to do a full run-through of his inaugural address, practicing with the TelePrompTer at Blair House, said Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer.

"He takes it very seriously," Fleischer said of the speech. "It is the singular beginning of his administration. He understands that and looks forward to it."

His parents former President George and Barbara Bush are expected to arrive in Washington on Thursday.

Fleischer said Midland, where Bush grew up, met Laura and began his career in the oil business, was "the perfect departure point from Texas on his way to a different type of service in Washington."

"It's his hometown, and he thought it would be very appropriate to go to his hometown where he was taught the values that he's going to bring to the White House as an appropriate way to begin his presidency."

Midland, heart of the Texas oil patch, is where Bush spent his youth and where he returned after attending Harvard Business School.

Although Bush was born in New Haven, Conn., he spent most of his boyhood in Midland, halfway between Fort Worth and El Paso. The place had a "frontier feeling," Bush wrote in his autobiography. "It was hot and dry and dusty."

He recalled a happy, baseball-mad childhood in Midland. "I was surrounded by love and friends and sports."

The family left Midland in 1959, when Bush was 13 and his father's interest in offshore drilling took him to Houston.

But George W. returned in the mid-1970s after graduating from Yale University and Harvard Business School, inspired, he said, "by the energy and entrepreneurship of the oil patch."

His future wife, Laura Welch, also grew up in Midland, but the two did not cross paths until his return after business school.

"There was so much energy here," he told the rally. "Not only in the ground, but in the lives of the people of West Texas. The spirit of possibility was as big as the West Texas sky."

Now, he said, "this is my last stop on the way to Washington." The Texans cheered.

"I am going to take a lot of Midland and a lot of Texas with me up there."