Bush Mixes Politics, Character-Building

Pressing his campaign to advance what he heralds as American values, President Bush on Tuesday promoted youth programs that focus on character-building.

Later he spoke at a Republican fund-raiser held at a hotel being boycotted by the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

The new presidential campaign to focus on “the American character” reflects an effort by the White House to move Bush away from the partisan struggles of his first half-year in office, particularly the issues that have identified him with conservative causes.

At the same time, it allows him to continue to speak up, as he did Tuesday, for his program to ease the way for his faith-based initiative--the government proposal to help religious groups deliver social services.

“We’re a country stitched together by communities of character,” the president said.

Speaking in the cool mountains two hours outside Denver, he said there is “a grand vision embodied in these mountains. And the vision is that we can teach our children right from wrong. And we can teach them good, sound values, so that when they get older they’ll make the right choices in life.”

Those values, he said, include respect for the land, for those with whom one disagrees, for neighbors and for others’ religious views.

Tuesday was Bush’s first full day away from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, after beginning a monthlong trip out of Washington 10 days ago.

His audience was made up of campers and their parents taking part in a YMCA program and National Park Service workers. Bush joined the camp group, helping some of them on a trail restoration project in the Rocky Mountain National Park.

Working with a saw to remove brush, joining them for a picnic barbecue and speaking at an elevation of about 8,000 feet, Bush paused occasionally to catch his break in the oxygen-thin setting. He was dressed in a red Windbreaker against temperatures in the mid-60s (30 degrees cooler than at his ranch this week).

Among the words of advice Bush gave the youngsters: “Listen to your mother. In my case, I don’t have any choice.”

His appearance among the ponderosa and lodgepole pines, a favored playground of bighorn sheep, prompted criticism from environmentalists, perhaps none more pointed than the message on one sign seen just outside the park’s main gate: “Drill in the uninterrupted wilderness of Bush’s mind.”

The focus on values and character notwithstanding, Bush used approximately half of his 12-minute speech to spotlight planned spending--$5 billion over five years--to end the maintenance backlog in the national parks. He saluted “progress in Washington” and gave himself a pat on the back for the tax rebate checks now being mailed to taxpayers.

“But there’s a role bigger than just initiatives and legislation for a president in an administration,” the president said.

Later in the afternoon, the president flew by Marine Corps helicopter to Denver for a fund-raiser for the reelection campaigns of Sen. Wayne Allard and Gov. Bill Owens, a year from November.

The event drew criticism from the NAACP, because it took place at the Adams Mark Hotel. The civil rights organization announced last month that it was resuming a boycott of the Adams Mark chain in response to its treatment of black college students attending the Black College reunion in Florida in the spring of 1999.

Bush’s brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, avoided coming face to face with the boycott when a Chamber of Commerce event he was to attend in Jacksonville was moved out of the hotel. NAACP officials said the fund-raiser should also have been moved.

Kweisi Mfume, NAACP president and chief executive, said, “We would hope that the president would do what his brother Jeb Bush did and not go to the Adams Mark because of our boycott.”