'Retooled' Bush Rolls On
George W. Bush mixed with voters in two battleground states, Florida and Missouri, on Tuesday with the retooled "retail" campaign style that won him the GOP primaries.
The Texas governor stopped by a West Palm Beach diner in the morning, working the room and posing for pictures with coffee mug in hand.
While Democrat Al Gore's day included a school bus-tour of southern Ohio and a celebrity fund-raising gala in New Jersey, Bush had only two scheduled events.
After his diner stop, Bush met with a half-dozen doctors and one patient at a cancer treatment hospital for nearly a half-hour before the TV cameras. A loser of a photo-op, the event took place in a cramped, badly lit, low-ceilinged room with gray walls and a gray carpet.
The governor was there to say the $6,000 out-of-pocket maximum in his Medicare plan applies to all medical costs and not just prescription drugs, while Gore's $4,000 out-of-pocket cap applies only to prescription drug costs in excess of that amount.
Bush then flew to St. Louis for a town-hall meeting with a conspicuously friendly crowd that applauded every completed thought.
As he did with seniors in Clearwater, Fla., the day before, Bush assumed a plainspoken, "just folks" manner and trotted out another picture-perfect "tax family." Most of these families are young, two-parent households with two or three children and incomes in the $30,000-$50,000 range who would benefit from Bush's proposed tax cut.
"I don't believe in targeted tax cuts," said the GOP nominee, referring to Gore's approach of tax relief for specific purposes like providing long-term home care or attending college.
Bush said the family of five in the front row would save $2,100 under his proposed universal tax cut, but under Gore's economic plan "they got targeted out."
The crowd cheered at Bush's promise that younger people will "manage some of (their) own money in the private market" under his Social Security proposal. They applauded his plan to share half of federal conservation funds with state and local authorities. And they clapped when he said he'd raise the cap on the amount of tax-free money that families can set aside for their children's education.
Despite the crowd's encouragement, Bush seemed a little cranky. When a teenage questioner predicted fellow Missourians will vote House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt out of office in November, Bush wiggled his eyebrows and smiled at her political naivete.
All the audience questions were softballs that gave the candidate the opportunity to hit on his policy priorities, except the one where a man asked Bush to explain his plan for paying off the national debt.
Bush, who has no plan or target date for paying off the publicly-held debt of more than $3 trillion, characterized the $2.3 trillion Social Security "lockbox" as debt retirement. In addition, he said his $1.3 trillion tax cut "will serve as an insurace policy against potential economic downturn." On top of that, the governor said he had proposed another $100 billion of additional debt retirement as well.
The only questioner who got a rise out of Bush was the ten-year-old who asked, "Who's going to win the World Series?"
The former major league baseball executive shot back, "I can tell you who's not going to win the World Series this year: the Houston Astros or the Texas Rangers."
Bush collected a St. Louis Cardinals t-shirt from the lad and called it a night.