Senator’s Remarks Are Fuel for Bush

As President Bush rolled across the nation’s heartland in a tour bus this week, some of his biggest applause lines came not from his speechwriters, but from the lips of his Democratic opponent.

While the words of Sen. John F. Kerry have been a staple of the president’s campaign television ads, which portray the presumptive Democratic nominee as a flip-flopper on key issues, Bush took to quoting Kerry directly as he derided him for taking “both sides of just about every issue.”

In the last two days alone, Bush has invoked Kerry’s own words to thump him over whether he owns a sport utility vehicle, voted to fund troops in Iraq and -- in a new wrinkle Tuesday -- whether he met with foreign leaders who, according to Kerry, have said privately that they want him to win in November. In each case, Bush cited statements from Kerry to argue that the Massachusetts senator was fuzzy on these questions.

Two weeks ago, the president hit Kerry for his confusing response to whether he opposed oil drilling off Florida’s coast.

Bush’s style of in-your-face mockery is not often seen from incumbent presidents, who typically try to retain a “Rose Garden” image of remaining above the fray and use surrogates to offer the harshest campaign rhetoric.

Strategists say Bush’s tone is an emblem of a race that has turned fierce and personal earlier than usual.

On Tuesday, the partisan crowds who came to hear Bush ate it up.

Chortles and jeers filled a Maumee, Ohio, recreation center as Bush quoted Kerry’s explanation for how he had spoken to unnamed foreign leaders about his candidacy, when Kerry had not traveled overseas recently.

“He said, ‘What I said is true. I mean, you can go to New York City, and you can be in a restaurant, and you can meet a foreign leader,’ ” Bush said, quoting a recent Kerry response to a question on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Then the president added: “I got a hunch this whole thing might be a case of mistaken identity. Just because somebody has an accent and a nice suit and a good table at a fancy restaurant in New York doesn’t make them a foreign leader.”

That sparked more laughter.

“But whoever these mystery men are, they’re not going to be deciding this election,” the president concluded. “The American people will be deciding this election.”

Kerry aides claim that Bush’s sharp words are designed to be a distraction from the fact that the two states he visited Monday and Tuesday -- Michigan and Ohio -- have lost nearly half a million jobs over the last four years.

“He can’t quote himself, because he has nothing to say,” said Kerry spokesman Phil Singer. “Still, Bush’s use of Kerry’s words points to a nagging problem for the Democrat, whose sometimes muddled comments have been seized upon by Republicans even as bad news about the war in Iraq creates vulnerabilities for the president.

Tuesday was Day Two of Bush’s “Yes, America Can” tour, with four stops in mostly Republican hubs of Ohio: Maumee in suburban Toledo, Dayton, Lebanon and Cincinnati, where thousands attended a rally at a sports arena.

Bush won Ohio by 3.5 percentage points in 2000, and the state has since seen more than 200,000 jobs vanish. Largely for that reason, Ohio has emerged as one of the key battlegrounds between the presidential campaigns this year.

Bush will continue his tour Friday in Iowa and Wisconsin, continuing an effort to make the case that the economy is improving and that he is sympathetic to workers who have nonetheless been dislocated.

“There are still people who hurt, and I understand that,” Bush told a crowd in Dayton. “But we’re getting better.”

Bush held his second “Ask the President” event, opening himself up to audience questions in a talk-show format.

The eight questions, three of them from children, included such potential stumpers as what was “funnest” about being president.

Bush responded: “The funnest thing is this: Making decisions that make the world a better place.”

As Bush hammered away at his Democratic rival, Kerry aides questioned why the president would ride in a luxury coach that was partly manufactured in Canada.

The external shell of the Prevost H-345 VIP -- the 45-foot coach outfitted for Bush with leather couches, flat-screen televisions and a 2-foot-diameter presidential seal on the rear wall -- is built in Quebec City.

“It’s a little interesting that the ‘Yes, America Can’ buses are built by French Canadians,” Singer said.

But a co-owner of Hemphill Brothers Coach Co., which leased buses to the Bush campaign, said workers at its headquarters in Nashville added the engine, transmission and other components to the Canadian-made shells. Those components are largely U.S.-made, Trent Hemphill said.

“We have 130 employees who put these buses together, and 70 drivers,” Hemphill said. “The way things are done, parts come wherever. These are mostly American-made.”