Bush sketches goals for second term

By Mike Allen
The Washington Post

President Bush outlined campaign themes.

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WASHINGTON — President Bush turned abruptly last night from the martial rhetoric that had marked the first year of his re-election campaign and unveiled fall themes emphasizing his quest for peace abroad and his plans to make the nation more prosperous through what he called "a new era of ownership."

Bush said his goals include improving high-school education and expanding access to health care. Responding to economic hardships that have hurt his approval ratings, he said he wants to make the nation "even more job friendly" through such longtime conservative goals as restraining regulations, taxes and lawsuits.

"This nation is on a rising path, and with four more years we'll achieve more growth, new and higher-paying jobs, and greater opportunity for all of our citizens," Bush said. "We will continue to lead the cause of freedom and peace, and we will prevail."

Bush's address at the Washington Convention Center contained the first formal hints of his plans for a second term.

Bush's new agenda is heavier on business goals than the "compassionate conservatism" he espoused in his previous campaign. He delighted the crowd of 7,000 by renewing his support for business-friendly measures that have failed to pass during his first term, most notably an energy policy to encourage more domestic production, as well as limits on lawsuits and damage awards for medical malpractice.

"During the next four years, we'll help more citizens to own their health plan, to own a piece of their retirement, to own their own home or their own small businesses," Bush said. "We'll usher in a new era of ownership in America, ... help all our citizens save and build and invest, so every person owns a part of the American dream."

Bush gave few specifics, but his advisers said he plans an education agenda that will emphasize college and vocational training.

Aides said Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove, had hoped to make the addition of private accounts to Social Security a centerpiece of the campaign. With older voters in Florida and elsewhere remaining skeptical, Bush will talk often about the issue but will emphasize the need to work out specifics with Congress, the aides said.

Bush's "opportunity society" agenda also will call for measures to promote home ownership, as well as retirement savings accounts, which would increase the amount that could be saved with taxes deferred; and lifetime savings accounts, which would give tax advantages to saving for education, medical costs or other major expenses.
 
Bush is constrained in what he can propose by a deficit that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated at about $450 billion for this year and expects will continue for the next decade.

The president included a vigorous defense of his decision to invade Iraq, despite the rising death toll among U.S. troops. "We've turned the corner in extending freedom throughout the world," he said. Bush said the long-term safety of the United States requires work to "change the conditions that give rise to terrorism in the Middle East — the poverty, and the hopelessness, and the resentments that terrorists too often exploit."

He laced the remarks with some of his toughest criticism of Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and his Democratic running mate, Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C. "Whether their message is delivered with a frown or a smile, it is the same old pessimism," Bush said. "And to cheer us up, they propose higher taxes, more federal spending and economic isolationism."

Kerry's campaign spokesman, Phil Singer, called the speech a rehash, saying it was "difficult to spot what was new about it besides the hype."