Bush and Cheney Spend Holiday Working Crowds

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney celebrated the Fourth of July in all-American fashion, looking for votes Sunday in neighboring battleground states.

Using a two-day bus tour through suburban and rural areas of Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania in an effort to shed his dour image and shore up sagging approval ratings, a tie-less Cheney tossed out the first pitch at a minor-league baseball game in Altoona and attended a barbecue with firefighters.

He was joined by his 10-year-old granddaughter, Kate Perry, who donned an Altoona Curves jersey and threw a pitch of her own.

“I think Kate has a future in baseball,” Cheney said.

In Charleston, W. Va., Bush led a July 4 celebration by telling thousands of flag-waving supporters that America remained “the best hope for all mankind.”

Both appearances -- with small-town backdrops in conservative areas -- came as the president’s reelection campaign is honing a new line of attack on presumed Democratic nominee John F. Kerry: that he is out of step with mainstream “traditional values.”

Campaign officials said Sunday that Kerry invited the assault by declaring last week that he held “conservative values,” and that the theme would play out with increasing intensity over the summer in television ads and speeches by Bush and Cheney.

Cheney continued to attack Kerry on Sunday, again listing the Massachusetts senator’s votes against a ban on flag-burning, abortion limits and gun rights, while the presence of the vice president’s wife, Lynne, and his granddaughter offered reminders of the overall theme.

“It is important that we teach our children and our grandchildren the ideals and the values on which our great country was founded,” Lynne Cheney told a rally early Sunday in Pittsburgh.

Bush’s visit to West Virginia was the president’s ninth since he took office and was the second time he had appeared in the state for the July 4 holiday. He marked Independence Day in Ripley two years ago.

As Bush slowly made his way down the front steps of the state Capitol to prolonged strains of “Hail to the Chief,” he was all but engulfed by flag-waving supporters.

The president’s excursion to Charleston got off to a false start, as Air Force One developed an engine problem just before takeoff and a backup plane had to be pressed into duty.

The delayed departure from an airport near Camp David, the presidential retreat in the western Maryland mountains, forced the cancellation of Bush’s scheduled attendance at an 11 a.m. service at the Bible Center Church in Charleston. “The plane broke down,” as the president later explained to the crowd here.

As he hailed the sacrifices of West Virginia’s troops, Bush explained that their far-flung deployments in the war against terrorism was necessary so that “we do not have to face them here at home.” Of the terrorists, Bush added: “They are running out of places to hide; they know their cause is failing; they know that time is against them.”

Cheney, for his part, appeared even more at ease Sunday with the kind of personalized politics that he had previously disdained, but that aides said would become increasingly important in a tight race. The most recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of likely voters, taken from June 21 to June 23, showed Bush leading Kerry by only one point.

The vice president, who prefers to work behind the scenes, even invited some reporters aboard his luxury motor coach bearing the slogan, “Yes, America Can” -- the same bus Bush used in May for a tour of Michigan and Ohio. After bringing holiday wishes to a town square in Ligonier, Pa., the vice president stepped aboard a far less fancy tourist bus ferrying the reporters traveling with him.

“It’s been a good trip. Enjoyed it,” he said into the public address system.

But Cheney was quick to caution that he was not going to stray off the campaign script.

“I’m not going to say anything significant,” he said, “so quit taking notes.”