Gore’s Buddhist Temple Visit Provides Fodder for Bush

George W. Bush continued his criticism of Al Gore’s ethics, needling the vice president Saturday over his fund-raising appearance exactly four years earlier at a Buddhist temple in Southern California.

Speaking to a national convention of radio talk show hosts here, Bush used a light touch to deliver a sharp message, as he focused in on a controversy that Republicans expect to be one of Gore’s major vulnerabilities in the fall presidential election: his role in President Clinton’s 1996 campaign fund-raising.

In particular, Republicans believe that Gore’s participation in the April 1996 fund-raiser at the Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights will prove a powerful symbol of misbehavior.

On Saturday, Bush noted that it was “the fourth anniversary to this very day of [Gore’s] historic visit to the Buddhist temple. It’s an amazing fund-raising act where you can convert poverty into wealth. Nevertheless I know he couldn’t make it [here] and I’m sure he’s celebrating this occasion in private.”

At the 1996 Hsi Lai Temple event, Democrats collected $55,000 in illegal contributions, some of them ostensibly from Buddhist nuns and monks who had taken vows of poverty. Prosecutors later proved that the nuns and monks had been illegal “straw donors” with other sources providing the money. Gore has given several different accounts of his participation but has insisted he did not know the event was a fund-raiser.

Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, spent much of this week promising to “change the tone” in Washington. On Saturday, he also fired a barb at Clinton--though again with a light touch. Bush joked that some talk radio hosts, most of whom have stridently opposed the president, may be disappointed that the “Clinton era is ending.”

“This is a guy who provided you with a lot of interesting material,” Bush said. “He’s a man who, actually, used talk radio to help him get elected so he owed you a lot. And he didn’t let you down.”

Bush’s remarks to the 150 or so talk radio hosts were so brief they bordered on perfunctory. Though he flew more than three hours each way from Austin to appear at the conference, Bush spoke for only 12 minutes and did not take questions from the audience.

Later, though, he did sit for four rapid fire interviews with talk radio hosts who had set up shop in the hallway outside the meeting hall, and also took one question from reporters.

In response to that question, Bush criticized the educational accountability plan Gore issued Friday. Gore, the presumptive Democratic nominee, proposed that the federal government increase or withhold educational funds from the states based on whether they improve student performance as measured by national tests. Bush last fall offered a similar plan that would rely on state tests as the yardstick.

Bush said that while he had not “really looked at [the Gore plan] fully” it appeared to have “pretty shallow accountability.” He added: “It is one of these accountability systems that require endless bureaucracy to have any accountability.”

In his interviews with the talk radio hosts, the Texas governor said “no” when asked whether a Republican administration would necessarily be less sympathetic to the Justice Department lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. But he refused to comment further, saying: “So long as there is an outstanding court legal issue I’m not going to comment on it.”

Bush told another interviewer that he was looking forward to his May 9 on-then-off-now-on-again meeting with Arizona Sen. John McCain, his principal rival during the primaries.

“I’m going to remind him--and he knows this--there is a lot we agree on, like Social Security reform, or governmental reform, or education reform,” Bush said. “So we have plenty of ground of common interest, and I’m going to talk to him about the general election and hope that he’ll campaign with me.”