Bush daughters electrify convention

Twin sisters Jenna and Barbara Bush, 23, ignited the Republican National Convention with their jocular and irreverent introduction of their Dad, linked to the convention by satellite television hookup. The president then introduced Laura Bush for her remarks.

		Karen Ducey / P-I
	President Bush's daughters Barbara, left, and Jenna address the crowd at Madison Square Garden.

The twins said they stepped into the campaign limelight because "we realized that this would be (the president's) last campaign and we wanted to be part of it." The twins' grandparents looked on -- former President George Bush and former first lady Laura Bush.

Jenna Bush poked fun at their grandmother, saying the former first lady always thought the popular HBO television show “Sex in the City” was “something that married people do but never talk about.”

Her sister Barbara recalled the Kerry daughters’ touching story at the Democratic convention about their father trying to revive one of their childhood hamsters who had dropped into the water.

“We had a hamster, too,” said Barbara. “Let’s just say ours didn’t make it.”

"A loving man with a big heart.”

First lady Laura Bush, describing her husband as a "loving man with a big heart," offered a deeply personal portrait of her husband of 27 years in nationally televised remarks to the Republican National Convention.

		Karen Ducey / P-I
	First lady Laura Bush addresses delegates at the Republican National Convention in New York's Madison Square Garden.

She highlighted personal qualities that many Americans rarely see as the president sharpens campaign rhetoric on the trail and appears in formal White House settings highlighting his role as commander-in-chief.

“People ask me all the time whether George has changed?” Mrs. Bush told her audience. “But he’s still the same person I met at a backyard barbecue in Midland, Texas.”

Mrs. Bush spoke at length about the hardships of life and death decisions that weigh on him. “I remember some very quiet nights at the dinner table” after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, she recalled. “George was weighing grim scenarios and ominous intelligence and potentially even more devastating attacks.”

“And I remember sitting in the window of the White House, watching as my husband walked on the lawn below. I knew he was wrestling with these agonizing decisions that would have such profound consequences for so many lives and the future of the world.”

“No American president ever wants to go to war,” she said. “And my husband didn’t want to go to war -- but he knew the safety and security of America and the world depended on it.”

The Bush campaign has been putting the first lady out front more often, mindful of public opinion reflected in a recent Los Angeles Times survey that showed 56 percent of respondents considered Mrs. Bush their idea of a first lady compared to 26 percent that felt that way about Teresa Heinz Kerry.

No peace talks expected

President Bush is hoping by the time he arrives here on Wednesday that he’s laid to rest the campaign flap he sparked when he said he didn’t think we could win the war on terrorism.

Bush tried to reassure delegates to the American Legion convention in Nashville, Tenn., that his administration would “win.”

“We may never sit down at a peace table, but make no mistake about it, we are winning and we will win,’’ Bush insisted.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Bush wanted to make it “crystal clear” that the United States will prevail in the open-ended conflict.

“I probably need to be more articulate,” Bush admitted in a radio interview with conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

The campaign of Democratic challenger John Kerry didn’t let Bush off the hook.

“The president has gone from mission accomplished to mission miscalculated to mission impossible on the war on terror,’’ said Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer. “We need a leader who knows we can win the war on terror and has a plan to do it.”

Schwarzenegger backs Bush

		Karen Ducey / P-I
	California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger addresses the delegates at the Republican National Convention in New York.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the multimillionaire Hollywood action hero, won a starring role at the Republican National Convention. The governor of the nation’s most populous state of California told delighted Republicans that the nation was “back” from the ill-effects of the Sept. 11 attacks “because of the perseverance, character and leadership” provided by the president.

Schwarzenegger added that the nation’s economy was on the rebound.

“To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy -- I say don’t be economic girlie men!”

Quote of the day

Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd on Kerry’s bounce from the Democratic convention in Boston -- “It was like Chinese food -- it dissipated very quickly.”

Arnold, go ahead and unpack

Bush campaign director Ken Mehlman is sending mixed signals on whether the re-election campaign wants California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to campaign for President Bush outside California.

There may be “opportunities” for the former Hollywood star to make appearances on Bush’s behalf elsewhere. But then again, says Mehlman, the new governor has to stay home in California to focus on the job he just won from voters in their recall of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis.

``Stay tuned,” Mehlman says.

Does that mean the Bush campaign wants Arnold to travel for Bush or does it mean the campaign wants him to stay home and run California?

“One of the two,” says Mehlman, a Harvard-trained lawyer.

One reason Arnold may not get the call: Schwarzenegger differs with Bush on some social issues – like abortion rights, approval of civil unions for same-sex couples and strong environmental laws and regulations – all at odds with much of the Republican platform and Bush’s core supporters.

Close ‘till the end

Matthew Dowd, a senior Bush campaign strategist, is telling reporters that the Bush-Kerry race will be a squeaker all the way to Election Day. Dowd sees the candidates trading the lead poll-to-poll or week-to-week, but always staying with 2 percent to 4 percent of each other – within polls’ margins of error.

The only thing that could “change the landscape,” as Dowd puts it, is for an external event to shake things up. He cites a surge in the economy, a terrorist attack within the United States or bad news from Iraq.

Let’s have coffee

First lady Laura Bush says she wants to talk to the American people tonight as though she bumped into them at the corner supermarket

“I want to try and answer the question that I believe many people would ask me if we sat down for a cup of coffee or ran into each other at the store,’’ she says in excerpts of prepared remarks released in advance by the GOP. “I want to talk about the issue that I believe is most important for my own daughters, for all our families, and for our future – George’s work to protect our country and defeat terror so that all children can grow up in a more peaceful world.”

Perfume free zone

Security personnel at Madison Square Garden and the adjacent news media facility aren’t letting people bring in any liquids.

Hair spray, perfume – all verboten.

The rejected bottles are piling up outside the airport-style screening equipment.

Hey Joe, welcome back

Hard-hitting Democratic operative Joe Lockhart has joined the Kerry presidential campaign as a senior adviser. You’ll remember Lockhart from his rough-and-tumble service as White House press secretary in the final years of the Clinton presidency dealing with touchy issues like impeachment.

Lockhart, a partner with The Glover Park Group, has been specializing in media relations and political strategy since joining the private sector after Clinton’s departure.

Lockhart’s a veteran on the campaign trail, having served as spokesman for the Clinton-Gore campaign in 1996, deputy press for the Dukakis-Bentsen campaign in 1988, assistant press secretary for the Mondale-Ferraro campaign in 1984 and a regional press coordinator for the Carter-Mondale campaign in 1980.

Targeting the keynoter

Bush’s re-election campaign has been crowing about enlisting Sen. Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat, to keynote the convention on Wednesday night. Bush’s handlers see Miller as a way to signal conservative Democrats that Bush is their kind of guy – not Kerry.

Miler’s Democratic critics have established a website – Zellout.com – to show their disapproval of the one-term Georgia senator changing sides to join Bush forces.

Democratic activist Eric Carbone says his operation has gathered 4,000 signatures from Democrats urging Miller to admit “you're a Republican registered as a Democrat.”

Wannabe casting call

The 2004 Republican National Convention is not only nominating George W. Bush for “four more years.” It’s also the casting call for prospective GOP presidential candidates in 2008.

None of the wannabes are talking 2008. That’s considered impolitic. Their preening is made possible, of course, because Vice President Dick Cheney says he won’t run to succeed Bush.

Last night’s convention speakers – led by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani – are very much in the mix. Add to that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.

There are others names, of course. But most Americans have yet to hear of them.

“Every convention puts forward what it considers to be its best foot,'' says presidential scholar Stephen Hess of the nonpartisan Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. ``Party people who are celebrities, household names, logically are the people who would be in the on-deck circle for the next available slot.''

So who is counting anyway?

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani offered a deeply personal tribute to President Bush in his address at the Republican National Convention Monday night. Giuliani mentioned Bush by name 32 times in prepared remarks. He cited Democratic challenger John Kerry by name nine times as he criticized the Massachusetts senator for what he portrayed as inconsistency on the war in Iraq.

But McCain was more circumspect in his endorsement of Bush and his criticism of Kerry. McCain mentioned the president by name only four times in the advance text of a 2,350-word address.

And the maverick Republican, a former Vietnam combat pilot imprisoned by North Vietnam for more than five years, didn’t mention Kerry by name at all.

McCain and Kerry, who both saw combat in Vietnam, have been long time Senate allies on a variety of issues, including leading the way for President Clinton to restore full diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1995 -- 20 years after U.S. withdrawal.

Lead from the heart

Two of the nation’s most prominent lead-from-the heart Republicans -- former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. -- invoked the nightmare of Sept. 11 before the Republican National Convention to pay homage to what they described as President Bush’s unflinching leadership in the face of crisis.

Giuliani, the feisty Republican moderate twice elected mayor in this Democratic bastion, asked Americans to make leadership in the war on terrorism “the core of their decision'' on Nov. 2 and to re-elect Bush.

The president has “remained rock solid” since the attacks, Giuliani said. “Some call it stubbornness -- I call it principled leadership.”

McCain, an independent-minded Republican who lost the GOP presidential nomination to Bush in 2000, praised Bush’s leadership in going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. “I believe as strongly today as ever, the mission (in Iraq) was necessary, achievable and noble,” McCain says.

The officials’ heavy references to the Sept. 11 tragedy stem in part from a decision by Republican officials almost two years ago to choose New York City as their convention city. The officials expected the setting to serve as a reminder of Bush’s post-9/11 leadership when his approval rating soared to an unprecedented 90 percent.

But nagging questions have cropped up since then about Bush’s leadership before the attacks. The independent, bipartisan Sept. 11 inquiry that was created over initial White House objections unearthed evidence that some administration officials missed signals about the impending attacks.

Invoking Sept. 11

Republican Chairman Ed Gillespie is trying to pre-empt any criticism that the Republican National Convention is inappropriately using the Sept. 11 tragedy for political purposes.

You may remember the Bush campaign encountering criticism back in March when the president’s re-election team used actors dressed as firefighters to reenact post-attack efforts at the World Trade Center site.

Gillespie tells reporters that Democrats at their convention in Boston in July mentioned Sept. 11 “more than a hundred times.”

Do you have the script, or do I?

Speakers at the Republican National Convention have to submit their planned remarks to convention planners to make sure everyone is working from the same script.

Bush deputy campaign manager Mark Wallace tells reporters the editing and review procedure is a “proudly collaborative process.” As Wallace sees it: “We haven’t had any struggles. It’s been an amazingly collegial, collaborative process.”

Democrats did the same thing in Boston.

Do I have a deal for you!

Not every enterprise in the vicinity of the Republican National Convention is happy with prospects for more business from visiting Republicans.

My Hearst colleague Dan Freedman spied a sign in front of “Generations,” a small clothing store on 8th Avenue about 10 blocks from Madison Square Garden.

``Annoying Republican Convention Sale.''

A war we can’t win?

President Bush concedes today in a television network interview that the United States can’t really “win” the war on terrorism in the conventional sense of victory.

“I don't think you can win it, but I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world,” Bush tells NBC News’ “Today” show in a videotaped interview.

Bush vows unrelenting pursuit of al-Qaida in the short term and a long-term effort to “spread freedom and liberty” to “defeat the ideologies of hate.”

The Kerry campaign quickly seized upon Bush’s remarks. John Edwards, Democrats’ vice presidential candidate, issued a statement saying that Bush “now says we can’t win the war on terrorism.” Adds Edwards: “This is no time to declare defeat. It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick, but (Democrats) have a comprehensive long-term plan to make America safer.”

Your paperwork, please

Hearst Newspapers’ congressional correspondent Judy Holland got a speedy and unexpected ride this morning to the opening session of the Republican National Convention with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and three of his staffers in a police-escorted Cadillac Escalade.

When they got to Madison Square Garden, Frist and his entourage including Holland swept past the long lines and security gates into an elevator, landing promptly outside the convention floor in record entry time for a reporter.

But as soon as Frist’s entourage headed inside the convention hall, Holland found herself alone and without the proper credentials. She was quickly escorted out of the building and back to the media center with the rest of the mere mortals.

GOP to Kerry: More incoming

John McCain is giving fellow Republicans the green light to criticize Democratic challenger and fellow Vietnam combat vet John Kerry for anti-war testimony to Congress in 1971.

“What happened in combat is one thing,’’ McCain told CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “Now what people do afterwards, John Kerry's activities, anti-war activities, just like any other political activities, that's open to criticism, open to anything.”

The Republican-bankrolled Swift Boat Veterans for Truth already are running ads that show Vietnam vets complaining about Kerry’s congressional testimony in which he recounts fellow veterans’ claims of war crimes

Oh, that platform

Republican delegates are preparing to ratify a party platform that heralds conservative positions on a variety of touchy social issues. It calls for constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriages and abortions, opposition to federal licensing of gun owners, stepped up efforts to win prayer in public schools and limits on federally funded stem cell research.

But former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani tells fellow moderate Republicans not to worry about the platform if they disagree. He doesn’t support those planks either.

``Party platforms, you know, are party platforms,’’ Giuliani said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” ``The reality is it comes from the candidate.”

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., spies a “bait-and-switch” by the GOP promoting moderate GOP speakers at the convention like Giuliani and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to eclipse the underlying conservatism of the GOP leadership and the party platform.

Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., said during a taxi ride with Hearst Newspapers congressional correspondent Judy Holland that the GOP platform “is the most meaningless document ever devised by man.” I don’t turn to the platform to know how to vote.”

Counting the morning after

There are various morning-after estimates on the size of the demonstration that swept peacefully through midtown Manhattan past heavily guarded Madison Square Garden.

Police won't offer an official estimate. Protest organizers say there were nearly 500,000. That would make it the largest demonstration in New York City in decades.

“This is beyond our wildest dreams,'' said Cathy Ingram, a spokeswoman for United for Peace and Justice, the main protest group.

John Settles, 23, a marcher from New York, said protesters wanted a peaceful demonstration. "We don't want the message of this protest to be violence,'' he said. ``We want to tell the world that we're against the war and Bush.''

Police said approximately 200 demonstrators were taken into custody, most for disorderly conduct.

A sobering backdrop

Vice President Dick Cheney used the missing World Trade Center towers on Sunday as a dramatic backdrop to praise the leadership of President Bush following the Sept. 11 tragedy.

America saw a leader who was “calm in a crisis, comfortable with responsibility and determined to do everything necessary to protect our people," Cheney told enthusiastic Republicans at a rally on Ellis Island in New York harbor on the eve of the four-day Republican National Convention.

The New York City skyline was in the distance, with a gap where the 110-story towers used to be.

Bush echoed the steady-as-she-goes theme out on the campaign trail in the battleground state of West Virginia. “If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy,” declared Bush who has made his role as commander-in-chief a centerpiece of his re-election campaign. “This isn't going to happen on my watch.”

Save eight bucks

The Republican Party is proud to offer a prime-time address at the outset of the national convention by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California. ''People pay $8 in droves to go see Arnold. We're going to provide him for free to you -- but you have to watch our convention." That word from Republican Chairman Ed Gillespie.

Don't ask; I like my job

Republican Chairman Ed Gillespie is a member of an informal but elite "Breakfast Club'' that meets at Karl Rove's Washington, D.C., home every weekend to quietly check on progress in the Bush re-election campaign. The New York Times described the operation in Sunday's editions. Gillespie was asked about the club a short while later. He wouldn't talk. "I'm going to stay inside my lanes as chairman of the Republican National Committee,'' Gillespie said, adding: ''I know how to stay in a job.''

Looking ahead, not back

Keep your eye out for George W. to start talking about the next four years and not the last four. He's already starting to shift his focus out there on the campaign trail -- a gradual transition that will culminate with his nomination acceptance speech here in New York City Thursday. Elections are about the future, not the past, Bill Clinton used to say, so if you want "four more years" you'd better have some new proposals up your sleeve.

Can't find one when you need one

Dr. John Starr, a Washington, D.C., orthopedic surgeon, and his wife Judy were walking through New York City's Chinatown late Saturday night looking for a police officer. Not to report a crime but to get a good restaurant recommendation. The physician's grandfather was a police officer outside Buffalo so the future doctor learned early where to go for reliable restaurant info. But with all the cops guarding the Madison Square Garden site of the Republican National Convention, there was not a cop to be found. The couple settled on Shanghai Cuisine on Bayard Street without the help of the local constabulary and reported that the meal was fantastic.

Eye in the sky

Looks like the familiar Goodyear blimp that we've seen for so many years over major events has been replaced by a green-and-white Fuji film blimp lazily soaring over the site of the Republican convention. With all the politicians gathering here, I guess there's enough hot air to go around to support a new blimp in town.

Oh, they're with him

Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican Party, told reporters shortly before tens of thousands of anti-war and anti-Bush demonstrators swamped midtown Manhattan that protestors were supporters of Democratic challenger John Kerry. Gillespie says he's taken out an advertisement in local newspapers to appear on Monday that welcomes Republican delegates, thanks New York City for helping to stage the four-day GOP infor-mercial and reminds visiting Republicans that those protestors are Democrats.

"We will be joined here by thousands of Democrats and Sen. Kerry's supporters,'' Gillespie says he's telling delegates.

Asked if he was linking the demonstrators to Kerry's campaign, Gillespie replied: "I didn't say that they were linked. But they are supporters of Sen. Kerry.'' He said he hoped protestors' exercise of free speech stayed peaceful.

Downplaying 'What Ifs'

Two Muslim men were charged Saturday with plotting to bomb a New York subway station near the Republican National Convention. But top city officials insisted the federal conspiracy case had no tie with the GOP gathering or intelligence suggesting that al-Qaida wants to attack financial targets in New York City and elsewhere before the Nov. 2 election.

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly emphasized the pair had no explosives and no timeline for a plot that NYPD began tracking a year ago. “They had no connection to an international terrorist organization and they had no explosives in their possession,” Kelly said.

Cops 'R Us

There are cops everywhere in mid-town Manhattan. It almost looks as though they’re guarding each other. But the NYPD had big welcoming smiles when asked for directions. I hope the good mood keeps up all week. The test may come on Sunday when tens of thousands of anti-Bush demonstrators are expected to parade near the convention site.

Chatter on radio talk shows recalls the bloodbath in Chicago at the Democrats’ 1968 convention during the Vietnam War when anti-war protestors were beaten back by Mayor Richard Daley’s riot-ready police. Some say that outbreak of violence played into the hands of Republican Richard Nixon who portrayed himself as the law-and-order alternative to those pesky Democrats and beat Hubert H. Humphrey.

Missing in Action?

Asked why such controversial figures as Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and House Republican leader Tom Delay, R-Texas, are not going to be speaking at the Republican convention, Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot lumped Ashcroft and Rumsfeld with Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice – national security officials who usually don’t ``do politics.’’ But Racicot didn’t really have a shirt cuff explanation for the radio silence planned for Delay, known affectionately by some moderate Republicans on Capitol Hill as ``The Hammer’’ because of his hard-nosed success getting Republican lawmakers to vote the way the GOP leadership wants.

Lawyers' Full Employment Act

Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot makes it clear the Bush-Cheney campaign is anticipating a close election and possible election problems like those in Florida in 2000. The Bush team has teams of lawyers getting ready to swoop into any precinct with ballot-counting problems, particularly in the 17 states that the Republicans consider close-calls. Racicot’s legal SWAT team sounds a whole lot like comments by Kerry at a meeting with Hearst executives and editors in Boston in early July. Kerry said his campaign was recruiting and training election lawyers to intervene in any ballot related issue anywhere in the country. The hard lessons of the 2000 election have obviously made indelible impressions on both parties.

King Kong where are you?

Manhattan hotels are packed with delegates, guests, celebrities and VIPs attending the Republican convention and taking part in the countless parties and fund raisers that swirl nearby. The popular New Yorker Hotel across the street from the convention site at Madison Square Garden looks like it’s right off the Gotham City set of ``Batman.’’ King Kong may have practiced on this aging skyscraper before taking Fay Wray up the Empire State Building about a mile away.

The Debate Debate

Get ready for that snore-worthy indoor sport every four years – the Debate Debate. Rep. Jennifer Dunn, R-Wash., one of 10 board members that overseas the Commission on Presidential Debates, says neither Bush nor Kerry has agreed to take part in any of the three debates already scheduled by the bipartisan organization this fall. Dunn says she’s hopeful – as is Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot, the former GOP governor of Montana.

We won’t know until well after Labor Day whether the Debate Debate yields agreement for Bush and Kerry to show up Sept. 30 in Coral Gables, Fla.; Oct. 8 in St. Louis; and Oct. 13 in Tempe, Ariz. The commission has penciled in Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., for the VP debate Oct. 5 in Cleveland. But we’ll see.

Republicans storm enemy territory

The GOP is staging a raid behind enemy lines by holding its convention in New York City. The Republicans have never held their presidential nominating convention here before. The Democrats have been here plenty – five times since 1868. That was the year Tammany Hall Democrats nominated former New York Gov. Horatio Seymour on the 21st ballot to take on Civil War Gen. Ulysses Grant in the first presidential contest after the end of the conflict. Grant won, retired here after the presidency and his tomb is here in Manhattan overlooking the Hudson River.

The last Democrat nominated in New York City was in 1992 when Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, won the nod and went on to win the White House. Georgia Democratic Gov. Zell Miller delivered the convention keynote for Clinton at Madison Square Garden at the Democrats’ ’92 convention. Miller, now an ardent supporter of Bush, will be back on stage here next Wednesday night giving the keynote speech at the Republican Convention.

A-Train to convention-ville

I took Amtrak’s crack Acela express from Washington up to the Big Apple today to begin covering the Republican National Convention. It was a smooth, quiet trip. But not as quiet as it might have been. The train was so packed with the convention-bound that harried Amtrak conductors quickly opened up the cell-phone-free ``quiet’’ car to all comers. A few of Washington’s traveling power brokers had such pressing pre-convention business that they had to make and take a few cell phone calls during the three-hour rush to Manhattan.

Live from New York

Join me starting Saturday, when our convention blog goes live!