He posed with farm implements and ate porkchop sandwiches, but what clearly delighted President Bush as he campaigned at the Illinois State Fair on Sunday was the opportunity to call his opponent a whiner and complainer and indulge in some new and unrepentent Clinton-bashing.
Campaigning with his wife, the president received a roaring partisan reception from the sawdust floor up to the rafters at the fair`s coliseum on the last stop of his first post-convention campaign tour.
He stuck to politics rather than policy, however, and did not address the central issue for the state`s corn growers, a waiver that would allow ethanol to be used as an alternative fuel under strict new Clean Air Act regulations.
The state`s politicians and farm interests lobbied Bush hard during a private meeting at the fairgrounds, but the only commitment they could get was that Bush would take ”a real hard look” at the issue.
In a short meeting with Gov. Jim Edgar, Agriculture Department Director Becky Doyle and farming associations, Bush said he would personally consider the request.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly said as recently as four days ago that the administration was not considering ethanol as an alternative fuel.
White House officials say privately that Bush is in a quandary over competing markets and environmental interests in an election year, with farmers wanting him to approve a waiver and others in industry wanting it denied.
Some of those at the meeting said they were surprised that Bush wasn`t more familiar with their argument.
”I think this was the first time he`d even heard it from the farmers,”
said Steve Wentworth, who farms 1,000 acres near downstate Oreana and is a former president of the National Corngrowers Association.
Making the traditional Republican candidate`s pilgrimage to the state fair, the president tried to touch all the bases, wearing duck-billed caps first from corn producers and then from pork farmers.
His speechwriters even found a way to use local color in his criticisms of Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Bush complained that during the first nine months of the campaign he felt like one of the corndogs at the fair as he was being ”skewered” by the Democratic opposition.
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The president has been getting back over the last three days as his campaign seeks to shore up support in the South and in the traditional battleground states in the Midwest. After a one-day trip along the East Coast on Monday, Bush returns to Chicago and to Detroit on Tuesday.
”Nine months of Bill Clinton hitting me and he gets hit back, and mildly-haven`t begun to fight yet, I haven`t-and he starts to whine and complain,” the president said while looking over John Deere combines and harvesters. ”He (Clinton) takes a little, gentle broadside and he starts to whine and complain. People don`t want that. . . .”
On Saturday night in Dallas, the president, talking to evangelical leaders, charged that Democrats have all but abandoned God and said he was
”struck by the fact that the other party took words to put together their platform but left out three simple letters: G-O-D.”
Clinton responded by saying Bush was using religion as a political weapon and that it was ”deeply offensive” to question Democrats` commitment to God.
He also said Republicans should be ashamed of the ”off the wall” attack by Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) linking Democratic values to Woody Allen`s affair with the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow, his ex-companion.
The day was aimed more at producing positive photos, however, and Bush toured a circle of farm implements-combines and ”mulch masters”-and chatted with farmers such as Paul Compton of Sidney, his parents and two sons.
Like most ”photo opportunities,” the conversations were often brief and breezy. ”We were kind of hoping to talk about agricultural issues,” said Compton. Instead Bush chatted with Compton`s father, Gerald, about being left- handed.
Making sure he appealed to local interests, the Bushes sat on park benches in the Pork Avenue Cafe, where the president ate the tent`s special butterflied porkchop sandwich.
Joining the president, but staying in the background, was Sam Skinner, back for a few hours in his home state on his last day as White House chief of staff.
Asked if he felt sadness leaving that job to make way for James A. Baker III who will oversee both the administration and the re-election campaign, Skinner said he actually felt pretty upbeat. ”I`m handing it over in pretty good shape, the polls are up and I`ll be traveling a lot doing fundraising and a lot of surrogate speaking for the president.”
Edgar introduced Bush at the coliseum by noting that Clinton did not attend the fair. ”Two candidates said they were going to come . . . only one came, George Bush,” he told the audience who waved Bush-Quayle placards and chanted ”Four More Years.” Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, visited the fair last week.
Adding variations to his developing stump speech, Bush promoted free trade and access to foreign markets, which he said would be a bonanza for American farmers.
Along with attacking Congress in general, Bush made his second attack in two days against local Democratic congressmen, this time singling out Rep. Dick Durbin in favor of his Republican challenger, John Shimkus.
Durbin, who represents the Springfield area, said later it was a
”dubious honor” to be one of the first representatives attacked in Bush`s campaign against Congress.
But he said some of Bush`s remarks were ”misleading” and criticized the president for ducking both the economy`s problems and the ethanol issue in his speech.
”I don`t quite understand why he scheduled the stop here,” Durbin said. ”Illinois is one of the country`s biggest agricultural states, and he comes here and fails to address one of the biggest issues facing us?”
Without naming him, Bush cited Durbin as an example of the ”gridlock Congress” and criticized him for voting against going to war with Iraq and then trying ”to bring legal papers against me.” He also criticized Durbin for standing against a balanced budget amendment, though Durbin said he supported a Democratic version.
Durbin said he voted his conscience against the Persian Gulf conflict, and claimed that the ”papers” were an early, nonpartisan effort by several congressmen to have judges force the president to seek their approval of any declaration of war, as is required by the U.S. Constitution.