Sunday, August 27, 2000
Campaign 2000
Bush works Ky. hard - where's Al?
The national press is having a field day with George W. Bush's work ethic, or more precisely his lack of one.
But the Republican presidential candidate, presumably with his pillow in tow, is making another campaign trip to Kentucky. He plans on being in Louisville on Thursday.
Details aren't all in, but Mr. Bush is scheduled to visit a school to tout his education plan and then help local Republicans open his campaign headquarters.
So by the end of this week, Mr. Bush will have made 1.6 million campaign stops to Kentucky. That compares to Democrat Al Gore, who has never been to this state, and Joe Lieberman, who does not realize Kentucky actually exists.
Those are, of course, exaggerations. But it's starting to seem that way, isn't it?
“Al Gore has got to get his (fill in the dirty word meaning “behind”) to Kentucky or we can forget about winning this fall,” one local Democratic Party operative fumed into his car phone Friday after hearing that Mr. Bush was once again coming to the commonwealth.
That will make nine campaign stops in Kentucky for Mr. Bush, compared with one visit from Mr. Gore.
Members of Mr. Gore's Kentucky campaign, which set up camp this week at state Democratic headquarters in Frankfort, are adamant that Mr. Gore and Mr. Lieberman will be in Kentucky before election day.
Election day?!?!! That's more than two months from now. By then Mr. Bush will have been here so much he'll be a Kentucky Colonel, an honorary resident of Duckhead and a member of Ludlow City Council.
No president who has won the White House in the last nine elections did so without carrying Kentucky. Either Mr. Gore is taking Kentucky for granted or he feels he can't win.
Mr. Gore is a hard campaigner, but he doesn't seem to want to come here.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bush can't stay away from Kentucky, even while he is being whacked in the national press for being lazy on the stump.
“He likes to work something close to eight hours a day, with large blocks for running, and he likes to be home at night,” Bruce Buchanan of the University of Texas told the Associated Press.
“He's not a workaholic as Al Gore seems to be,” Mr. Buchanan added. “He doesn't measure his success by the number of hours he works, but rather by the results he gets.”
The New Republic's Web site is reporting that Mr. Bush works about a nine-hour day as governor, but that included a five- to seven-mile jog and a couple of games of video golf.
If Mr. Bush isn't working hard, it sure doesn't show here. He's working Kentucky so hard it looks like he's trying to get UK tickets.
My bad: I wrote in a column last week that Republican state Sen. Jack Westwood of Erlanger failed to read two bills he voted on during his first four-year term in the Kentucky General Assembly.
One bill increased the pension of lawmakers; the other bumped the salaries of county officials.
Mr. Westwood approached me at a political function last week and politely corrected me. It was only one bill that he had not read.
I apologize. But maybe in making the mistake I have given Mr. Westwood a new campaign slogan:
“Support Jack Westwood. He voted on only ONE bill he didn't read.”
Patrick Crowley covers Kentucky politics for the Enquirer. He can be reached at 578-5581, or (502) 875-7526 in Frankfort.
CROWLEY ARCHIVE
