Philadelphia – Only six years after he first won elective office as governor of Texas, Bush, 54, ascended to the summit of a party he has tried to recast in his own image, which he described this way: “Optimistic. Impatient with pretense. Confident that people can chart their own course in life.”
In that spirit, Bush issued a tough-minded demand that America do better in its flush economy, saying too many families are poor, too many students are badly schooled and too many working people are overtaxed to justify a nations pride in its wealth.
The 2,066 delegates responded enthusiastically to Bushs call to action, interrupting their nominee 76 times with applause, including several eruptions lengthening into mini-demonstrations. Thanks to the audience outbursts, the 3,900-word speech, which campaign officials had expected to take about 45 minutes to deliver, in the end clocked in at 57 minutes.
The numbers were based on interviews with 511 voters, and the survey had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points for all voters and 7 percentage points for those who watched the speech.
Indulging in only a few flashes of his trademark wit and good humor, Bush for the most part was gravely serious, offering a warning that the current good times are lulling America into a false sense of security. Given the chance to avenge his fathers loss to Clinton eight years ago, Bush acknowledged the record prosperity of Clintons years in the White House but portrayed them as a “squandered” opportunity.
He condemned Clinton and Gore, his Democratic opponent in the general election, for leaving behind millions of Americans not fortunate enough to have taken part in the boom of the 1990s, declaring: “The surplus is not the governments money. The surplus is the peoples money.”
Bush suggested that the nations unprecedented wealth could be as much a burden as a blessing. “Times of plenty, like times of crisis, are tests of American character,” Bush said. “Prosperity can be a tool in our hands used to build and better our country. Or it can be a drug in our system, dulling our sense of urgency, of empathy, of duty.”
Addressing Democratic accusations that he lacks substance, Bush talked in detail about a wide range of policy issues and offered specific, targeted programs. Among them:
Education: Bush criticized a practice known as “social promotion,” passing students along to the next higher level each year no matter how poor their grades. “Too many American children are segregated into schools without standards, shuffled from grade to grade because of their age, regardless of their knowledge,” he said. “This is discrimination, pure and simple – the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Bush said that “local people should control local schools” and that “those who spend your tax dollars must be held accountable.” Foremost, he said, parents of children in failing schools should be given government vouchers to help them pay for private education.
Social Security: Bush acknowledged the political peril of Social Security, which he said has been called the “third rail of American politics – the one youre not supposed to touch because it shocks you. But if you dont touch it, you cant fix it. And I intend to fix it.”
Bush said he would “keep the promise of Social Security … no changes, no reductions, no way.”
For younger workers, he proposed “the option – your choice – to put a part of your payroll taxes into sound, responsible investments.”
Military security: Bush repeated a common Republican criticism that the armed forces are under-equipped, under-trained and underpaid, and he called for deploying missile defenses to guard against attack from so-called “rogue states” like North Korea and Iraq, a Clinton proposal that Russia has rejected as a violation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
In just about the only instance in which he agreed with Clinton on a specific policy issue, Bush declared: “Now is the time, not to defend outdated treaties, but to defend the American people.”
Taxes: Rather than call for a radical restructuring, Bush listed a series of specific changes designed to “bring common sense and fairness to the tax code.”
Bush supported the politically popular move to eliminate the estate tax, which is tied up in Congress with an unrelated issue, and called for lowering the minimum income tax rate to 10 percent from its current 15 percent.
Abortion: Acknowledging dissenters sincerity but rejecting their plea for tolerance of their views, Bush restated the partys traditional opposition to abortion and promised to sign any congressional bill to outlaw a late-term procedure opponents call “partial-birth” abortion.
Sections of Bushs address echoed the combative speech Wednesday night in which Cheney temporarily retuned the conventions upbeat tenor with its first head-on attack on the Democratic ticket.
Like Cheney, Bush refrained from direct personal assaults on Clinton, never once mentioning the presidents impeachment or campaign finance investigations. Unlike Cheney, he offered a litany of direct criticisms of Gore.
Bush waited until near the end of his address to bare a part of himself that has defined much of his public life: his evangelical Christian beliefs and how they inform his approaches to policy.
Referring to the day he “held our first child and saw a better self reflected” in his wifes eyes,” he said he had learned that “who we are is more important than what we have.”
Declaring that “we know we must renew our values to restore our country,” Bush told the delegates, and the national television audience, that faith requires “each of us … to love and guide our children, and help a neighbor in need.”
“Synagogues, churches and mosques are responsible not only to worship but to serve,” Bush said, echoing proposals he has made to offer federal money to “faith-based institutions” so they can pick up where government programs leave off.
Afterward, as tradition dictates, Bush was joined on the podium by much of his family, including his wife, Laura, and their twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara. Bushs parents, however, stayed in the audience, reflecting the campaigns wish that the former president and highly popular former first lady not overshadow the new nominee.
Bush embarks on his campaign first thing Friday morning. After a prayer breakfast and a meeting of the Republican National Committee at a downtown hotel, he flies to Pittsburgh to begin a train trip through the Midwest, which is considered a crucial battleground in the general election. By Sunday, the Bush express will have stopped in Akron, Ohio; Detroit; Chicago; and Springfield, Ill.
