Bush ready to accept GOP nomination
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-09-02 14:18

U.S. President Bush was reaching out to Americans to keep him on the job, recalling the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks "when one era ended and another began," and offering himself as a resolute wartime commander in chief with ambitious plans for a second term.

The four-day Republican National Convention was coming to a close Thursday with a speech by Bush that will touch off a two-month dash to the finish line in a nation that seems as closely divided now as it was four years ago.

US President Bush speaks at a rally before 20,000 people at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2004. [AP]

Bush, who arrived in this fortified convention city Wednesday night at the end of a three-day, six-state campaign dash, will boast of his record and sketch the domestic agenda he would pursue if elected to a second term, a goal that eluded his father. He'll also talk — sometimes in personal terms, his advisers said — about how the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks changed him and the world order.

"Government must change with the changing world to make people's lives easier — to give people a chance to be able to realize the full promise of tomorrow," Bush told thousands of cheering supporters at a campaign rally Wednesday in Columbus, Ohio.

The speech also will offer an agenda that includes initiatives to simplify the tax code and help people buy homes, start businesses, hone job skills and set up tax-free retirement and health care accounts, aides said.

Ahead of Bush's acceptance address, Vice President Dick Cheney and convention keynoter Sen. Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat, unleashed a scathing barrage of attacks on Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

"His back-and-forth reflects a habit of indecision and sends a message of confusion," Cheney told GOP delegates in a prime-time address Wednesday night. "Senator Kerry says he sees two Americas. It makes the whole thing mutual. America sees two John Kerrys."

Delegates roared their approval of Cheney's broadside against Kerry, some joining in the taunts by shouting "flip flopper, flip flopper" and waving flip-flop sandals in the air.

Kerry, vacationing on Nantucket island in Massachusetts, was asked whether he took some blows from the speeches.

"I don't think so," Kerry said.

Within minutes of his arrival here Wednesday, Bush was embracing New York City firefighters. At a community center in Queens, the president's eyes misted as he stood among the firefighters and held a black fire helmet that read "Commander in Chief." The firefighters chanted "four more years."

"To see the courage and compassion and decency of our fellow Americans during an incredible time of stress has shaped my thinking about the future of this country," Bush said.

Much has changed since Bush stood at Ground Zero three days after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and told construction workers through a bullhorn: "I can hear you. ... And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."

That bullhorn speech helped lead to a surge of national unity before the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan that went after al-Qaida terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and his Taliban supporters.

But as Bush seeks re-election, he is confronted by a death toll of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq that is likely to reach 1,000 by Nov. 2; a failure to find bin Laden; investigations into pre-Sept. 11 and prewar intelligence lapses; and a struggling economy.

Cheney promoted the administration's first-term successes, asserting that "businesses are creating jobs, people are returning to work, mortgage rates are low and homeownership in this country is at an all-time high. The Bush tax cuts are working."

The Democratic National Committee fired back with a statement noting that in his speech Cheney "said the word `job' only twice, and once was in reference to his own."

Miller's keynote address praised Bush's performance in office while blasting his Massachusetts colleague's two-decade Senate record.

"For more than 20 years, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure," Miller said.

Reacting to the pounding by Cheney and Miller, Kerry spokesman Joe Lockhart said: "Slash and burn politics didn't work in 1992. They won't work now. Dick Cheney and Zell Miller looked like angry and grumpy old men."

Outside the high-security Madison Square Garden convention site, protests continued in the streets. And while demonstrators were mostly peaceful, the arrest total as of late Wednesday had soared beyond 1,700 for the week, surpassing those made in much more violent events at Chicago's 1968 Democratic convention.

Kerry was hitting the campaign trail again late Thursday in Ohio. On Wednesday, he defied tradition by making an appearance while his rival's national convention was in progress, telling a national convention of the American Legion in Nashville, Tenn., that "extremism has gained momentum" as a result of Bush's missteps in Iraq.

Bush advisers saw the convention culminating in the president's speech as an effort to cast him as a strong leader, to further discredit Kerry and to reach out to independents and swing voters. They also sought to tamp down expectations of a convention "bounce" heading into Labor Day.

"The incumbent party which has its convention second generally gets two-thirds of the bounce of the challenger party which holds its convention first. And since their bounce was zero, two-thirds of zero is zero," said Bush chief political strategist Karl Rove.

Bush aides said they'd be happy to be even on Labor Day, but privately suggested they hoped for more.

Trying to slow Bush's momentum, the Kerry campaign plans a seven-state advertising blitz in Ohio, Florida, Iowa, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Wisconsin as the first installment of a $45 million, 20-state ad buy.