Bush's political address revs up GOP audiences -again and again

WASHINGTON -- President Bush never seems to tire of the line in his speech. It always brings a hush at his boisterous political rallies -- and then a burst of laughter.

"See, I don't know what got in the enemy's mind. They must have thought our national religion was materialism -- that we were so selfish, so self-absorbed, so interested only in ourselves, that after 9/11/2001, oh, we might have filed a lawsuit or two."

Those were his exact words Friday in Portsmouth, N.H. He used almost the same ones earlier in the day in Pennsylvania -- and recently in South Dakota, Colorado, Michigan, Maine, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and New Mexico. He's been using the phrases, give or take a syllable, for months, rolling them out so often that members of his entourage lip synch along.

Like his predecessors, Bush has crafted an address that changes little from one political rally to the next.

He sprinkles it with regional observations, tailors good-natured insults to the crowd and inserts different Republican candidates' names, but the overall message and the bulk of the words change little.

As he crisscrosses the country from now until Election Day, sometimes barnstorming through three states in a day, the stump speech is a reliable friend: It revs up GOP audiences and allows Bush to pay tribute to candidates in a standard structure that ties their agenda to his.

Former President Reagan once said, "If you have something you believe deeply in, it's worth repeating time and again until you achieve it. You also get better at delivering it."

Bush has honed his speech at more than 70 fund raisers and rallies this year.

Bush's speech runs just over a half-hour and has several distinct sections, but its structure remains the same:

The folksy introduction:

Bush sets out immediately to prove he's not delivering a stump speech by weaving in local color. "I love to come to a part of the country where the cowboy hat is a part of the work uniform," he said Monday in Alamogordo, N.M. "It kind of reminds me of home."

The call to vote:

Heading into an election in which control of Congress could turn on a single seat, Bush's efforts these days are aimed at getting out the vote. "I want all people, no matter what their political party is or whether they even like a political party, to exercise their obligation to vote," Bush said in Denver on Monday.

Flattering the candidate:

Virtually all of the Republicans that Bush promotes married "well" or "above" themselves, in Bush's estimation of the political wives. Some must endure Bush's friendly gibes. Georgia's GOP gubernatorial hopeful, Sonny Perdue, "might not be the prettiest fellow to look at," Bush allowed in Atlanta on Oct. 17. "But he can get the job done for all the people in Georgia."

Fusing the candidate's agenda with his own:

Bush invariably praises his candidates by assuring listeners that their agendas dovetail with his own. Terrorism and the threat of war in Iraq are stump speech staples.