Bush Preaches to His Choir at Florida Rallies

President Bush crisscrossed the battleground state of Florida by helicopter Saturday, using peppery rhetoric and the stagecraft of the presidency to awe and energize his supporters in a homestretch effort to get out the vote.

At the first of four scheduled campaign appearances, the president’s white-top Marine One helicopter landed in the outfield of a baseball stadium in Fort Myers to a swelling soundtrack -- themes from the films “Top Gun” and “Air Force One” -- against a backdrop that read “Soaring to Victory.” He was greeted by wild cheers from a partisan crowd.

“This is about motivating the troops to work just a little bit harder, knock on just a few more doors,” Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said, introducing his brother on the stage at second base.

Similar rallies followed in Lakeland, Melbourne and Jacksonville -- the only one of the four not to get an outfield helicopter landing. Instead, the crowd in Alltel Stadium was treated to live music from country singer Aaron Tippin and a thunderous fireworks display.

All four cities are in Republican areas, suggesting the campaign was aiming its message less at undecided voters than at the party faithful working to turn out Bush voters on Nov. 2.

Campaign workers estimated the crowd in Jacksonville at 50,000; however the stadium, which holds 76,877, was only half-full.

Polls indicate the election in Florida may be as close as in 2000, when Bush won the state by 537 votes after a contested recount. A poll this week by Quinnipiac University showed Bush leading Kerry 48% to 47% -- which with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points makes the result a statistical dead heat.

“I want to thank the people putting up the signs, making the phone calls, doing all the hard work at the grass-roots level,” Bush told the crowd at each rally. “With your help, we’ll carry Florida again and win a great victory.”

In all four cities, the president recalled the Sept. 11 attacks and argued that Kerry misunderstood the nature of the terrorist threat.

“This will be the first presidential election since Sept. 11, 2001,” he said in Fort Myers. “Americans will go to the poll in a time of war and ongoing threats unlike any we have faced before. The terrorists who killed thousands of innocent people are still dangerous and determined to strike us again. The outcome of this election will set the direction of the war against terror.”

The president accused Kerry of changing his position on Iraq, saying that before the war, Kerry had declared former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein a threat to the United States.

“Sen. Kerry seems to have forgotten all that as his position has evolved in the course of the campaign,” the president said at all four rallies. “You might call it election amnesia.”

Kerry campaign aides countered that the president was hoping for some election amnesia on his own behalf. “As much as we’d all like to forget the last four years of George Bush’s failed policies and wrong choices, voters aren’t going to have amnesia when it comes time to vote on election day,” said Kerry spokesman Phil Singer.

Vice President Dick Cheney also worked Saturday to raise voters’ concerns about Kerry, projecting the Democrat’s past statements and Senate votes onto the world stage. His language was new, but the points he made have been central to his campaign message for months: Kerry would have weakened the United States and strengthened its enemies.

At a sparsely attended rally in Farmington, N.M. -- about 500 people left a high school gymnasium half-empty -- Cheney said that 20 years ago, Kerry proposed “doing away with many of the major weapons systems that Ronald Reagan used to win the Cold War.... So, if John Kerry had been in charge, maybe the Soviet Union would still be in business,” the vice president said.

“In 1991, John Kerry voted against sending troops to expel Saddam Hussein after he invaded Kuwait,” Cheney said. “So, if John Kerry had been in charge, Saddam Hussein might well control the Persian Gulf today.”

Kerry spokesman Singer said of the vice president’s message: “Sounds like Dick Cheney is coming unglued. Next thing you know, he’ll be blaming John Kerry for losing the Alamo.”

Bush delivered the reorganized campaign speech that he unveiled a day earlier, which shifted emphasis from national security to social issues such as gay marriage and abortion that appeal to his core supporters.

“We both have records,” Bush said. “I am proudly running on my record. And the senator is running from his.

“And there is a reason why. There is a mainstream in American politics, and my opponent sits on the far left bank,” Bush said in Melbourne.

Bush closed out the Jacksonville rally and the long day of campaigning by declaring that this election would be one of the most important in U.S. history.

“The security, the prosperity of our country, the education of our children, and the health of our families, the retirement of our seniors, and the direction of our culture are all at stake,” the president said before the afternoon sky erupted in fireworks. “And the decision is in the best hands: the hands of the American people.”

Bush planned to spend the night at his ranch near Crawford, Texas. He is scheduled to campaign in New Mexico today, and in Colorado, Iowa and Wisconsin on Monday.

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Gerstenzang reported from Farmington, N.M.