Dubya Returns To Florida
Traveling to Florida for the first time as president, George W. Bush Monday urged Democrats to move beyond the bitter election contest that gave Mr. Bush the White House.
"Some of the Democrats here want to keep revoting the election but if they would listen to Americans they will find Americans want to move forward," he told reporters at Tyndall Air Force Base.
Visiting a slice of the Florida panhandle that voted two-to-one for him over Democrat Al Gore, Mr. Bush aimed to promote his $1.6 trillion tax cut plan, but Democrats did their best to keep the focus on the disputed Nov. 7 election results.
Mr. Bush urged business leaders in Panama City to contact their Washington representatives in support of the income tax bill that passed the House and will, most likely, be rewritten in the Senate.
"Instead of sending people your check, why don't you send them your check and send them an e-mail while you're at it?" he suggested in an invitation-only speech at the Marina Civic Center.
Brandishing a yellow pen, Mr. Bush said he would not back down. "I'm going to argue until I get a bill to sign. It's out of the House, come on out of the Senate, and I'll sign it." Over the weekend, Republican officials floated the idea that Mr. Bush was considering a lesser cut for that top income bracket.
The crowd wildly cheered Mr. Bush and his brother Jeb, the Florida governor whose role in last year's recount controversy is featured in a new $20,000 state Democratic Party ad campaign on Tallahassee and Panama City TV stations.
"Jeb Bush delivered Florida to his brother George and now we're paying the price," said the ad, criticizing the president's tax cuts for spending a projected budget surplus that may or may not materialize.
"Jeb Bush didn't stand up to count Florida's vote right and George Bush's budget undermines prosperity. Bush fuzzy math. It doesn't add up," the spot concluded.
Outside the civic center, a handful of demonstrators revisited the November election.
"There will be questions about his legitimacy for the next four years," promised Bill Boyd.
Another demonstrator, Matthew McDonough, sniffed at Mr. Bush's insistence that the country has forgotten about the acrimony of his 36-day battle with former Vice President Al Gore, which was finally resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court.
"'Bygones being bygones' is clearly not going to solve the American crisis of counting votes and having every vote counted," McDonough said.
At Tyndall, where the president reiterated promises of better military pay and housing, Marie Mayfield said there was "probably nothing" that could heal the Democrats' wounds in Florida.
As someone who voted for Mr. Bush, Mayfield worried, "If we don't accept his legitimacy, he won't be able to be an effective leader."
Mr. Bush ame to Florida hoping to sway the state's two Democratic senators, Bill Nelson and Bob Graham, to back him on tax cuts. Both declined a White House invitation to join the president.
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This area's congressmen, Democrat Allen Boyd and Republican Joe Scarborough did accompany the president as he toured airman Donnie Bryant's modest home on base and then, behind closed doors, entertained questions from a dozen base families.
"It's your chance to give the commander in chief a few suggestions," Mr. Bush said. Gesturing to his brother, the president quipped: "If you've got any problems, write him."
On the civic center stage, Scarborough was the only official to dare allude to the Florida election controversy.
Referring to TV networks who called the state's election night tally for Gore before polls closed in the panhandle's Central time zone, Scarborough joked: "We're not only the land that time forgot, we're the land that the TV networks forgot."
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