Texas Trip Boosts Bush and His Campaign

President Bush is continuing to spearhead a remarkable fund-raising blitz, but one would hardly know it judging by his public remarks.

Since mid-May, when his reelection bid became official, Bush has raised more than $40 million for his campaign. The latest infusion of cash came from dinners Friday in Dallas and Saturday in Houston.

Still, the president insists at every turn that he is not politicking at all.

“The truth of the matter is there’s plenty of time for politics,” he said at the $2,000-per-head gathering in Houston. “Right now, I’m still working on the people’s business in Washington, D.C.”

He added: “We will continue to work hard to earn the confidence of all Americans by keeping this nation secure and strong and prosperous and free.”

Amid the adulation of more than 700 donors, his comments provoked no dissent. But the fund-raiser capped a week that saw Bush and his administration struggling to deflect criticism on several fronts: his justification for the Iraq war, his record on the economy and a federal budget deficit now projected to reach at least $455 billion this year.

In public, Bush showed no signs this weekend that the criticisms had taken a toll. He was, after all, back in his beloved Texas, spending time at his ranch in Crawford when not on the fund-raising circuit. As he put it at one point: “It’s great to be home.”

And why not?

The estimated $7 million he collected in the space of 24 hours is the most he has hauled in from any state this year. And it kept his campaign well on track to raise its targeted $170 million -- and perhaps more -- for the primary season.

The warm Texas receptions left Bush positively ebullient. In Dallas, he even joked about his recent African safari, when he and First Lady Laura Bush encountered two amorous elephants.

“This is our first trip back to Texas since I got back from Africa,” he told his Friday audience. “You may remember, we were over there, and we went to a park in Botswana. That’s where we learned a lot about our party’s mascot.”

But, according to some who have spoken with him in recent days, Bush’s mood in private has not been as playful. He has fumed, the sources say, over charges that he was trying to mislead the public by including in January’s State of the Union address an assertion that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium in Africa to restart its nuclear weapons program.

The administration recently acknowledged that the claim was based on questionable intelligence information. And while the White House has stressed that the assertion could still prove true, in Bush’s view the ongoing controversy misses the larger point -- that toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein removed a clear threat to U.S. national security and advanced the cause of freedom in the Middle East.

For the most part, Bush and his senior aides are striving to put the arguments over the uranium claim behind them. But it still clearly weighs on his mind. He discussed the matter Thursday night with seven members of the Texas congressional delegation as they flew aboard Air Force One from Washington to Waco, according to Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas).

Doing their part to keep the issue alive were about 100 protesters outside the hotel in Houston where Bush spoke Saturday. One, dressed like Uncle Sam, held a sign that said, “He lied, GI died.” Another placard read: “Bush lied, men died.”

Bush devoted his Saturday radio address to another potential political problem for him: the weak economy.

He reminded listeners that as a result of the recent tax-cut bill he pushed through Congress, the U.S. Treasury this week will begin mailing rebate checks to millions of families. The checks derive from a $400 increase in the per-child tax credit and will return more than $12 billion to taxpayers, Bush said.

He also noted that due to other provisions in the tax-cut bill, many Americans already have more take-home pay.

The president predicted that these and other tax cuts would help create new jobs.

“Now that Americans can keep more of what they earn, we can expect to see rising demand for goods and services. And as demand increases, companies will need more workers to meet it,” he said.

Bush also cited other “hopeful signs” for the economy, including growing investor confidence that has led to the recent rise in the stock market.

After the fund-raiser in Houston, Bush returned to Crawford. Today, he will greet Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the latest leader who supported the war with Iraq to be invited to the president’s ranch.

On Thursday, Bush will resume his fund-raising drive in Dearborn, Mich.