Revisiting '00 part of strategy for Bush in '04

LEBANON, Ohio -- President Bush swept onstage at an outdoor rally here earlier this month and launched into an animated discourse against terrorism, drawing thunderous cheers as he promised ''to stay on the offensive and bring these killers to justice one person at a time."

But a few minutes later, as he turned to domestic issues, Bush drifted back into a familiar routine. He promised tax cuts. He embraced faith-based groups. He demanded tort reform and a national energy plan.

''We need to remember that our greatest strength is in the hearts and souls of our citizens," Bush said to polite applause.

If the last idea did not excite the crowd, it may have been for a good reason: He used the exact same line four years ago. In fact, almost all of his material on domestic issues traces directly from his standard stump speech in the 2000 campaign -- often in the very language he used back then.

The effect is more than rhetorical, however. Virtually every issue Bush highlights these days suggests a campaign that is almost indistinguishable from his last. With slight variations, Bush still sells himself as a tax-cutter who wants less dependence on foreign oil, a partly privatized Social Security system, and more free trade -- the same goals he promised in his race against Al Gore.

The sameness of the president's stump speech has provided fodder for an intensifying debate over his approach to governing -- whether he is steady and consistent, focused on a few specific goals, or simply unable to adapt to new challenges. From Iraq to the economy to the budget, supporters argue that Bush bears a necessary determination, providing ''steady leadership in a time of change," as his slogan says.

But many Democrats and other critics see his devotion to the same set of ideas as a stubborn refusal to change -- or a reluctance to adopt new ideas as circumstances warrant. Even some conservatives say they would prefer a bold new policy platform rather than the same raft of positions from before.

''We are hoping there will be big ideas unveiled as the weeks proceed," Michael Franc, vice president of government relations at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said, saying there is ''a legitimate frustration that a lot of conservative intellectuals feel over the scarcity of really big policy thinking that's being put before the American people right now."

As Bush and his advisers point out, certain policies -- especially energy policy -- have not advanced because of standoffs in Congress, not because of a lack of initiative from the White House. Though both houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans, the administration argues, the majority is too narrow for Bush to push legislation through at will.

Bush has several accomplishments to point to, including the No Child Left Behind bill to restructure education standards, the prescription drug benefit added to Medicare, and his $1.3 trillion package of tax cuts. Democrats are critical of how all three have been executed; nonetheless, they were among the president's most visible promises in the last campaign, and give him solid achievements to run on this time around.

On at least six subjects, however, it is virtually impossible to distinguish comments Bush made four and five years ago from remarks he made last week. In Des Moines in 1999, Bush pledged to give ''younger workers of today new options like personal retirement accounts," and five years later, in March of this year, he remained on message. ''We want younger workers to own and manage their retirement under Social Security," Bush said in Dallas.

During a 2000 debate against Vice President Gore, Bush declared that funds ''ought to be available for faith-based programs and charitable programs that exist because somebody has heard the call to love a neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself."

At a Michigan campaign stop last month, Bush issued the same declaration, saying government should ''stand side by side with faith-based organizations" in order to encourage ''people who are taking time out of their lives to love their neighbor just like they'd like to be loved themselves."

When energy prices became an issue four years ago, Bush blasted the Clinton administration. ''All of a sudden, the results of having no plan have caught up with America," Bush said on Oct. 3, 2000, during a debate in Boston.

Four years later, Bush still hammers that theme. ''As we are learning at our gas pumps, this country needs an energy plan," Bush said earlier this month.

Senior Bush campaign advisers say his focused approach conveys a steadfast commitment to his values -- and, they note, carried him to victory twice in Texas. ''People want to know he's consistent, strong on issues, and cares about people," one top campaign official said, conceding that the approach has failed to solidify Bush's standing in the roles so far. ''There's a passion there, a core set of beliefs."

But the high volume of familiar phrases has given Democrats an opening to attack what they say are Bush's worst traits -- stubbornness and inflexibility, a lack of meaningful accomplishments, and a commitment to stale ideas.

''What's interesting about the Bush stump speech is that, to the extent he has an agenda, it's simply a recycling of the agenda he ran on in 2000 -- which shows either he's been a spectacularly unsuccessful president in getting things done, or they're kind of bereft of new ideas," said Ron Klain, a former adviser to President Clinton and Vice President Gore.

Another former Clinton adviser, Representative Rahm Emmanuel of Illinois, noted that Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign emphasized how he delivered on the promises of 1992, not repeated them. ''Both times, Clinton ran on 'the economy, stupid,' " Emmanuel said. ''But the first time, it was about why the economy wasn't doing well; and the second time, it was why we did what we did to bring the economy back. Different times require different talks."

Bush, he said, ''may want to say the same things, but the country is a lot different."

In looking ahead to the next four years, Bush still returns to the same arguments he made on education and taxes four years ago. On education, he told supporters at the Lebanon stop in early May, the No Child Left Behind Act is a ''good start."

But then, referring to the bill he had already signed, Bush continued: ''I look forward to debate on educational excellence. See, this bill is one that says we're going to raise the standards, not lower the standards. This is a bill that says we believe every child can learn, not just a few. This is a bill that says we expect the very best. This is a bill that says we're going to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations."

That argument dates back a decade for Bush, who made education one of the issues in his ''four-issue strategy" in the 1994 campaign for Texas governor (the other three were crime, welfare, and tort reform). In 1998, Bush's support for raising teacher salaries and his efforts to promote literacy helped win the backing of the state's most powerful Democratic lawmakers, creating the foundation for him to use education as part of his ''compassionate conservative" agenda two years later in the presidential race.

Gary Mauro, the Texas Democrat who ran against Bush for governor in 1998, said the president has always clung to a few sentences in his speeches. ''In 1994, it was even worse," Mauro said. ''He had his little speech with issues 1-2-3-4-5, and he literally said, 'one, two, three, four, five.' He actually had that in his speech."

By 1998, Mauro said, ''the thing that stunned my staff more than anything was that when we prepped for the debates, they said, 'here's the question, and here's how he'll answer it' . . . and then 90 percent of what he said was straight out of his stump speech."

There are also lines that have been conspicuously dropped over the last four years. Bush no longer makes his case for how to spend the since-vanished federal budget surplus, nor does he command, as he did in his convention acceptance speech in 2000, that a ''generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam. When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming."

Much of his approach to discussing national security has changed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, so that his stump speech now includes major sections on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a 1999 speech, titled ''A Distinctly American Internationalism," Bush laid out his view that international cooperation only goes so far.

''In the defense of our nation, a president must be a cleareyed realist," he said at a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. ''There are limits to the smiles and scowls of diplomacy."

Five years later, almost everywhere he goes, a similar line draws by far the most enthusiastic applause, as it did in Lebanon, Ohio, on May 4. ''I will never turn over America's national security decisions to leaders of other countries," Bush said. Only the context is new: Rather than Russia and China, he is talking about Iraq.

Anne E. Kornblut can be reached at akornblut@globe.com.