Posted on 08/16/2004 5:20:40 PM PDT by Libertarian444
On the Road, Bush Fields Softballs From the Faithful
By ELISABETH BUMILLER New York Times
His father loved them, Richard Nixon started them and President Bush has turned them into the near-daily warm bath of his re-election campaign.
Last week alone, in Virginia, Florida, New Mexico and Oregon, Mr. Bush had four "Ask President Bush'' question-and-answer sessions with rapt Republican audiences. The week before he had one in Columbus, Ohio, and this week he has one scheduled for St. Croix, Wis.
As anyone who has sat through the 90-minute forums knows, the questions are not hand grenades that detonate onto the evening news. Take, for example, one of the first queries at the "Ask President Bush'' session in Beaverton, Ore., on Friday:
"I'm wondering if I can get some inauguration tickets?''
Or consider this from Albuquerque on Wednesday:
"Can I introduce my mother and mother-in-law, who are new citizens to this country?''
Many times the questions aren't even questions at all. Exhibit A might be these words from an audience member in Niceville, Fla., on Tuesday:
"I'm 60 years old and I've voted Republican from the very first time I could vote. And I also want to say this is the very first time that I have felt that God was in the White House.''
"Thank you,'' Mr. Bush replied, to applause.
Bush campaign officials tell reporters at every "Ask President Bush'' forum that the questions are not planted and that the sessions are spontaneous. Senator John Kerry's campaign officials say the events are too ridiculous to be believed.
Whatever the case, Bush campaign officials readily say that they carefully screen the crowds by distributing tickets through campaign volunteers. "Our supporters hand them out to other supporters and people who may be undecided,'' said Scott Stanzel, a campaign spokesman.
The result is often a love-in with heavily Christian crowds. Mr. Bush relaxes, shows off his humor and appears more human than in his sometimes tongue-tied and tense encounters with the press. He clearly relishes the sessions: As of this coming Wednesday in Wisconsin, Mr. Bush will have had 12 such campaign forums, which is one less than the number of solo news conferences he has had in three and a half years in the White House.
Of course, reporters write that the events are canned, but campaign officials care only about the lively snippets of Mr. Bush that get on the local news.
"I'm also proud to be traveling with John McCain,'' Mr. Bush said to applause in Albuquerque, where he appeared with the Republican senator from Arizona after having him as an overnight guest at the presidential ranch. "Nothing better than waking up in the country and getting a cup of coffee and getting in the pickup truck and driving around and looking at the cows. That's what John and I did this morning. It's a good way to clear your mind and keep your perspective.''
Softballs aside, there have been a number of times when audience members asked substantive questions, like the woman in Florida with a brother on his way to Iraq who wanted to know if Mr. Bush had a plan for the American mission there. In Annandale, Va., a man asked Mr. Bush to comment on the nuclear threat from Iran, while another asked about relations between China and Taiwan.
But so far, Mr. Bush has fielded nothing close to the occasional tough question that his father got at his own "Ask George Bush'' sessions. In January 1988, during the Republican primary campaign, aggressive students at a high school in West Des Moines asked Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran-contra scandal. Six months earlier at an "Ask George Bush'' session in Canton, S.D., Mr. Bush was confronted by the brother of an American engineer killed in Nicaragua.
Bill Clinton also fielded the occasional hardball in his question-and-answer events. In a two-hour live call-in appearance on the CBS program "This Morning'' during the 1992 campaign, Mr. Clinton was whacked with this from an educator in Wisconsin: "From all the reports of your marital problems, et cetera, I'd like you to convince me that you would take the presidential oath seriously.''
When Nixon's aides started the format during the 1968 campaign as a way to loosen up the candidate, little was left to chance. As recounted in the book "The Selling of the President'' by Joe McGinniss, Nixon's aides requested specific help from Illinois in recruiting six people for a televised question-and-answer panel.
"They should be reasonably attractive, white - representative of the average middle-class voter,'' reads a memorandum included in Mr. McGinniss's book. Still, the memorandum said the panel did not have to be composed entirely of Nixon supporters: "It's desirable that some of the participants be uncommitted - or leaning in another direction - just so they're not actually hostile.''
Audience hostility at this point is hard to find on the 2004 Bush campaign.
"Mr. President, as a child, how can I help you get votes?'' a youngster asked at the "Ask President Bush'' event in Oregon on Friday.
"Thank you,'' the president responded. "That is the kind of question I like to hear.''
The irony of this being in the Slimes, which has NEVER thrown a hardball to a leftist.
They just can't stand it when a Republican gets the microphone and podium for a change. We have listened to the entire Hollywood and entertainment crowd, the Unions, the feminists, the gays, the NAACP and the list goes on for so many years it becomes nauseating. Yet, one group supports a Republican and we have to hear about it.
That's my question!!! The NY Times has been Freeped!!!
Pray for W and Our Troops
Senator Kerry, would you ever lie to the American people just to take us to war for purely political purposes?
Maybe the NYTimes wants his audience to ask him the kind of questions they should be asking of Kerry about his dubious Vietnam record? Or even the questions they should be asking John O'Neill, instead of the media blackout they are giving him now?
And what about Kerry's invitation only speeches?
NOT!
I suspect the obnoxious question would actually be phrased more like this:
"Senator Kerry, you wouldn't ever lie to the American people just to take us to war for purely political purposes like President Bush did, would you?"
You pups...shut up. Respect your elders and I have socks in my drawer that the US Government gave me in 1961. As Richard Pryor once said "you don't get to be old being no fool". Thank you Sir Richard. Now my statement: John Kerry is a traitor to this nation and a liar.
The NYT can bite either my boxers or my briefs.
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