Bush Tries To Mend Fences

George W. Bush insists he and John McCain could make a dynamic duo in Washington, with the senator and would-be president working together on issues such as overhauling campaign financing and shoring up Social Security.

The Texas governor and presumptive Republican presidential nominee put the positive spin on their relationship Thursday after seeming dismissive of his former rival in a published interview.

Reminded that the Arizona senator helped produce record turnouts in early primaries, Bush told The New York Times, "Well, then, how come he didn't win?" Asked whether McCain had raised his consciousness about reform, Bush replied, "No, he didn't change my views."

McCain supporters said Thursday that such "macho talk" had harmed hopes for an early endorsement of Bush that could be vital to his prospects of winning in November.

Looking toward the fall, Bush today was beginning the first advertisement since he and Vice President Al Gore wrapped up their primary contests. The 60-second ad focuses on education and will be run through Tuesday in southern Illinois markets, including on stations that reach into Kentucky, Iowa and Missouri, Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said today.

Exercising damage control with McCain, Joe Allbaugh, Bush's campaign manager, called John Weaver, McCain's top political adviser, to say he regretted that Times story didn't include more of the nice things Bush had said about McCain. Allbaugh also reached out to reassure McCain's allies in Congress.

"People want to focus on areas where we disagree," Bush told reporters in Springfield during a campaign swing through Illinois that included a fund-raiser to help replenish his depleted campaign kitty. "I'm going to focus on areas where we agree, and there's a lot of areas of agreement."

He named Social Security and campaign finance reform as examples.

Bush was equally deferential at later appearances in Wheaton and St. Charles.

"I want to thank the senator for his campaign. I want to thank the senator for his strong ideas on reform," he told a dinner of over 1,300 DuPage County Republicans.

At a fund-raiser in Wheaton, he said: "I think it's very important for us to recognize the contributions John made."

Bush's effort at fence mending came as he fended off fresh criticism from Gore and waded into a nasty dispute between the National Rifle Association and President Clinton.

He said the NRA had "gone too far" by accusing PresClinton of having "blood on his hands" for failing to enforce gun laws before a deadly shooting last year in Illinois.

Gore says the Texas governor does the bidding of the gun lobby; Bush strongly denies it.

Although he is a gun rights supporter, Bush said: "There's ways to debate the issue without casting aspersions on the president like that. I just think they've gone too far."

In an interview published in today's editions of USA Today, Gore called upon Bush to join him in backing pending federal legislation to require mandatory child-safety trigger locks for new firearms, end a loophole that exempts purchasers of guns at gun shows from background checks and ban cheap handguns known as Saturday Night Specials.

Meanwhile, campaigning close to home in Chevy Chase, Md., Gore criticized Bush's five-year, $483 billion tax-cut proposal as "economic snake oil."

The vice president cast the fall election as a choice between policies that underwrote the "Clinton-Gore recovery" and ones that gave America the "Bush-Quayle catastrophe," meaning the recession that hit when Bush's father was president.

"He is so committed to this economic snake oil that ... he even dismissed John McCain's campaign and said that he had learned nothing from it and had no intention of taking any advice from the McCain group," Gore said, accepting an endorsement from ACORN, an organization of neighborhood groups.

In a subsequent speech to the Amalgamated Transit Union in Washington, Gore asked: "How can somebody come before the American people with a straight face and say let's get rid of what's working and go back to what failed?"

Bush took the criticism curtly.

"He wants to leave the money in Washington," the governor said, referring to the lack of broad tax relief in Gore's agenda. "He'll say anything to get elected."

Both contenders were taking a long weekend off the campaign trail, with Gore staying at home in Washington and Bush spending the time at his ranch outside Waco, Texas.