A Chance to ‘Ask the President’

FOND DU LAC, Wis. —  The little boy so mumbled his words that the president could not make them out. But no matter.

“I think he said: ‘Four more years,’ ” a chuckling President Bush told an appreciative audience squeezed into a manufacturing warehouse, which was converted Wednesday into something akin to television stage set.

Welcome to “ask the president,” a folksy format Bush is using as he intensifies his reelection bid.

“Ask the president” events are nothing like the high-pressure, sometime contentious news conferences that Bush occasionally conducts at the White House. By contrast, Bush’s aides try to ensure he will stand before a friendly audience at campaign events.

Tickets to the event in Fond du Lac, attended by about 1,000 people, were handed out by the local Republican Party and the Bush campaign, said Paul Kiser, an area homebuilder and a campaign volunteer.

Organizers of a Bush rally in Duluth, Minn., a day earlier had turned away Democrats and independents who acknowledged they were not sure they would vote for Bush, the Duluth News Tribune reported.

As the sometimes jocular give-and-take showed here Wednesday, the “ask the president” format gives Bush an opportunity to respond to questions usually framed in a positive manner.

“Wondering if you can tell us all here the importance of the Patriot Act and what we can do to help get that renewed,” one man asked, referring to the controversial anti-terrorism law passed after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

“As a compassionate conservative, I’d like to get your views and your vision on how to work with the social culture and lead that inner city into a brighter future,” queried another.

One woman asked: “What can all of us here do to help you and [Vice President] Dick Cheney be sure to be reelected?”

Bush used the format from time to time as a presidential candidate in 2000, and his campaign resuscitated it in May.

The event in Wisconsin came as Bush completed a two-day Midwestern swing that began in Michigan and Minnesota. He lost all three states four years ago.

Each of Bush’s three stops in Wisconsin on Wednesday were in counties that he carried handily and where his campaign hopes to generate greater turnout in November to carry the state.

“Today is more about get out the vote and motivating the base,” said Nicolle Devenish, the reelection campaign’s communications director.

Bush began the day with a speech to invited guests at the Waukesha County fairgrounds outside Milwaukee, one of many Republican-leaning suburbs that also are crucial to Bush’s chances of winning Wisconsin.

From there, he rode a bus to Fond du Lac, stopping along the way in the town of West Bend to greet supporters and buy candy. Each outing was amply covered by the local news media.

In Fond du Lac, the 80-minute “ask the president” gathering at the Mid-States Aluminum Corp. was something of a misnomer, because Bush did not begin taking questions until halfway through his allotted time.

Bush, wearing a tie but no jacket, paced the stage as he defended his decision to wage war on Iraq and touted his domestic agenda.

A man who sought suggestions on how he could support U.S. troops elicited a long response on America’s post-World War II policies toward Japan and Germany. The president interrupted himself to quip, “This is called a filibuster,” before continuing his answer.

Regardless of format, the essential theme of Bush’s reelection bid remains unchanged: His tax cuts, he says, have revitalized the economy, while the war on terrorism has not only liberated 50 million Afghans and Iraqis, but has made America and the world safer.

At an appearance late in the day in Green Bay, Bush made a dramatic entrance into the Veterans Memorial Complex, where an estimated 10,000 supporters were gathered. The president’s bus pulled onto the floor of the arena as rock music blared.

Moments earlier, several blocks away, Bush’s bus was struck by an empty plastic water bottle hurled by a protester. It bounced off the vehicle.