Dog Has His Day, Others Pay for Bush’s Attention

For Pepe, the presidential handshake was free. Others paid $25,000 for the privilege. They also got a strong presidential complaint about the Senate’s refusal to support a controversial judicial nomination.

President Bush encountered the black-and-white dog resembling a border collie at a fire training center and the paying customers at a Republican fund-raising luncheon, during a visit to Dallas on Thursday.

During a long Easter holiday built around what a spokesman called “outdoor projects,” the president planned no other excursions from his 1,500-acre ranch--apart from the trip aboard Marine One, the presidential helicopter, to help Texas Atty. Gen. John Cornyn pick up $1.4 million for his campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Bush, who was accompanied by a skeleton staff to Crawford, was relying on the State Department to monitor developments in the Middle East. The president had no direct comment on the offer Thursday by Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestinian Authority, of a cease-fire in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

But in political speeches Wednesday and again in Dallas, he offered his most pointed response to the refusal of the Democratic-led Senate to vote on his nomination of U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering to a seat on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We’ve got to get good, conservative judges appointed to the bench and approved by the United States Senate,” he said. “I want people on the bench who don’t try to use their position to legislate from the bench. We want people to interpret the law, not try to make law and write law.”

The fund-raiser Bush headlined Thursday was his third in two days and the 13th he has attended in recent months, reflecting his concerted effort to help the Republican cause in November’s elections.

Cornyn is running for the seat held by Republican Phil Gramm, who is retiring.

Bush stopped for about half an hour at a firefighter training center in the Dallas area. The White House said the visit gave him a chance to promote his proposals to improve the nation’s readiness to respond to a terrorist attack. He made no public comments.

But in a quick aside to reporters, he said with a smile: “Welcome to Texas. Your day is better for it.”

And he gave Pepe the full presidential handshake treatment.

When the president makes political appearances outside of Washington, the White House regularly adds nonpolitical events to his schedule. Thus, the government shares the cost of his travel with the political group he is helping, in this case the Cornyn campaign and the state Republican Party.

Bush and Cornyn were filmed during the visit to the training site, with the footage expected to be used in Cornyn campaign commercials.

The fund-raising luncheon was expected to raise the money for Cornyn and--by charging contributors $25,000 for photos with the president--$400,000 for the state Republican Party.