You've seen the Gore-isms... In the spirit of a good chuckle, I bring you some Bush-isms:
"I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer questions. I can't answer your question."— Reynoldsburg, Ohio, Oct. 4, 2000
"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."—Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000
"They misunderestimated me."—Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000
"It's going to require numerous IRA agents."—On Gore's tax plan, Greensboro, N.C., Oct. 10, 2000
"I will have a foreign-handed foreign policy."—Redwood, Calif., Sept. 27, 2000
"When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were," he said. "It was us vs. them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there."—Iowa Western Community College, Jan 21, 2000
"If I'm the president, we're going to have emergency-room care, we're going to have gag orders."
"Will the highways on the Internet become more few?"—Concord, N.H., Jan. 29, 2000
"It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet."—Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000
"They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program."—St. Charles, Mo., Nov. 2, 2000
"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."--Reuters, May 5, 2000
"More and more of our imports come from overseas."—Beaverton, Ore., Sep. 25, 2000
"States should have the right to enact reasonable laws and restrictions particularly to end the inhumane practice of ending a life that otherwise could live."—Cleveland, June 29, 2000
"I want you to know that farmers are not going to be secondary thoughts to a Bush administration. They will be in the forethought of our thinking."—Salinas, Calif., Aug. 10, 2000
"We don't believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans."—Scranton, Pa., Sept. 6, 2000
"We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile.''—Ibid.
"Anyway, after we go out and work our hearts out, after you go out and help us turn out the vote, after we've convinced the good Americans to vote, and while they're at it, pull that old George W. lever, if I'm the one, when I put my hand on the Bible, when I put my hand on the Bible, that day when they swear us in, when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to not—to uphold the laws of the land."—Toledo, Ohio, Oct. 27, 2000
"Drug therapies are replacing a lot of medicines as we used to know it."
"It's your money. You paid for it."—LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000
"That's a chapter, the last chapter of the 20th, 20th, the 21st century that most of us would rather forget. The last chapter of the 20th century. This is the first chapter of the 21st century. "—On the Lewinsky scandal, Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000
"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream."—LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000
"It's one thing about insurance, that's a Washington term."
"I think we ought to raise the age at which juveniles can have a gun."
"Mr. Vice President, in all due respect, it is—I'm not sure 80 percent of the people get the death tax. I know this: 100 percent will get it if I'm the president."
"Our priorities is our faith."—Greensboro, N.C., Oct. 10, 2000
"I mean, there needs to be a wholesale effort against racial profiling, which is illiterate children."—Second presidential debate, Oct. 11, 2000
"One of the common denominators I have found is that expectations rise above that which is expected."—Los Angeles, Sept. 27, 2000
"I am a person who recognizes the fallacy of humans."—Oprah, Sept. 19, 2000
"The best way to relieve families from time is to let them keep some of their own money."—Westminster, Calif., Sept. 13, 2000
"They have miscalculated me as a leader."—Ibid.
"I don't think we need to be subliminable about the differences between our views on prescription drugs."—Orlando, Fla., Sept. 12, 2000
"This is what I'm good at. I like meeting people, my fellow citizens, I like interfacing with them."—Outside Pittsburgh, Sept. 8, 2000
"Listen, Al Gore is a very tough opponent. He is the incumbent. He
represents the incumbency. And a challenger is somebody who generally
comes from the pack and wins, if you're going to win. And that's where
I'm coming from."—Detroit, Sept. 7, 2000
"Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do it, that's trustworthiness."--Ibid.
"I don't know whether I'm going to win or not. I think I am. I do know I'm ready for the job. And, if not, that's just the way it goes."—Des Moines, Iowa, Aug. 21, 2000
'This campaign not only hears the voices of the entrepreneurs and the farmers and the entrepreneurs, we hear the voices of those struggling to get ahead."—Ibid.
"I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together."—Bartlett, Tenn., Aug. 18, 2000
"And if he continues that, I'm going to tell the nation what I think about him as a human being and a person."—President George H.W. Bush, on the Today show, Aug. 1, 2000
"You might want to comment on that, Honorable."--To New Jersey's secretary of state. -Washington Post, July 15, 2000
"Unfairly but truthfully, our party has been tagged as being against things."—Cleveland, July 1, 2000
"The only things that I can tell you is that every case I have reviewed I have been comfortable with the innocence or guilt of the person that I've looked at. I do not believe we've put a guilty ... I mean innocent person to death in the state of Texas." All Things Considered, NPR, June 16, 2000 (Thanks to Andy Nouraee.)
"I'm gonna talk about the ideal world, Chris. I've read—I understand reality. If you're asking me as the president, would I understand reality, I do."—On abortion, Hardball, MSNBC; May 31, 2000
"Actually, I—this may sound a little West Texan to you, but I like it. When I'm talking about—when I'm talking about myself, and when he's talking about myself, all of us are talking about me."—Ibid.
"I think we agree, the past is over."—On his meeting with John McCain, Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000
GOV. BUSH: Because the picture on the newspaper. It just seems so un-American to me, the picture of the guy storming the house with a scared little boy there. I talked to my little brother, Jeb—I haven't told this to many people. But he's the governor of—I shouldn't call him my little brother--my brother, Jeb, the great governor of Texas.
JIM LEHRER: Florida.
GOV. BUSH: Florida. The state of the Florida.—The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, April 27, 2000
"Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis."—Meet the Press, April 15, 2000
"I was raised in the West. The west of Texas. It's pretty close to California. In more ways than Washington, D.C., is close to California."—In Los Angeles as quoted by the Los Angeles Times, April 8, 2000
"Reading is the basics for all learning."—Announcing his "Reading First" initiative in Reston, Va., March 28, 2000
"We want our teachers to be trained so they can meet the obligations, their obligations as teachers. We want them to know how to teach the science of reading. In order to make sure there's not this kind of federal—federal cufflink."—At Fritsche Middle School, Milwaukee, March 30, 2000
"Other Republican candidates may retort to personal attacks and negative ads."—Fund-raising letter from George W. Bush, quoted in the Washington Post, March 24, 2000
"People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I'll give you an example; I don't read what's handed to me. People say, 'Here, here's your speech, or here's an idea for a speech.' They're changed. Trust me."—Interview with the New York Times, March 15, 2000
"It's evolutionary, going from governor to president, and this is a significant step, to be able to vote for yourself on the ballot, and I'll be able to do so next fall, I hope."—In an interview with the Associated Press, March 8, 2000
"It is not Reaganesque to support a tax plan that is Clinton in nature.''—Los Angeles, Feb. 23, 2000
"I understand small business growth. I was one."—New York Daily News, Feb. 19, 2000
"The senator has got to understand if he's going to have—he can't have it both ways. He can't take the high horse and then claim the low road."—To reporters in Florence, S.C., Feb. 17, 2000
"I don't want to win? If that were the case why the heck am I on the bus 16 hours a day, shaking thousands of hands, giving hundreds of speeches, getting pillared in the press and cartoons and still staying on message to win?"—Newsweek, Feb. 28, 2000
"I thought how proud I am to be standing up beside my dad. Never did it occur to me that he would become the gist for cartoonists."—ibid.
"If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign."—Hilton Head, S.C., Feb. 16, 2000
"How do you know if you don't measure if you have a system that simply suckles kids through?"—Explaining the need for educational accountability in Beaufort, S.C., Feb. 16, 2000
"We ought to make the pie higher."—South Carolina Republican Debate, Feb. 15, 2000
"I do not agree with this notion that somehow if I go to try to attract votes and to lead people toward a better tomorrow somehow I get subscribed to some—some doctrine gets subscribed to me."—Meet The Press, Feb. 13, 2000
"I've changed my style somewhat, as you know. I'm less—I pontificate less, although it may be hard to tell it from this show. And I'm more interacting with people."—ibid
"I think we need not only to eliminate the tollbooth to the middle class, I think we should knock down the tollbooth."—Nashua, N.H., as quoted by Gail Collins in the New York Times, Feb. 1, 2000
"The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case."—Pella, Iowa, as quoted by the San Antonio Express-News, Jan. 30, 2000
"This is Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. It's what you do when you run for president. You gotta preserve."—Speaking during "Perseverance Month" at Fairgrounds Elementary School in Nashua, N.H. As quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 2000
"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."—Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000
"The administration I'll bring is a group of men and women who are focused on what's best for America, honest men and women, decent men and women, women who will see service to our country as a great privilege and who will not stain the house."—Des Moines Register debate, Iowa, Jan. 15, 2000
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mential losses."—At a South Carolina oyster roast, as quoted in the Financial Times, Jan. 14, 2000
"We must all hear the universal call to like your neighbor just like you like to be liked yourself."—ibid.
"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"—Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000
"Gov. Bush will not stand for the subsidation of failure."—ibid.
"There needs to be debates, like we're going through. There needs to be town-hall meetings. There needs to be travel. This is a huge country."—Larry King Live, Dec. 16, 1999
"I read the newspaper."—In answer to a question about his reading habits, New Hampshire Republican Debate, Dec. 2, 1999
"I think it's important for those of us in a position of responsibility to be firm in sharing our experiences, to understand that the babies out of wedlock is a very difficult chore for mom and baby alike. ... I believe we ought to say there is a different alternative than the culture that is proposed by people like Miss Wolf in society. ... And, you know, hopefully, condoms will work, but it hasn't worked."—Meet the Press, Nov. 21, 1999
"The only thing I know about Slovakia is what I learned first-hand from your foreign minister, who came to Texas."—To a Slovak journalist as quoted by Knight Ridder News Service, June 22, 1999. Bush's meeting was with Janez Drnovsek, the prime minister of Slovenia.
"If the East Timorians decide to revolt, I'm sure I'll have a statement."—Quoted by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, June 16, 1999
"Keep good relations with the Grecians."—Quoted in the Economist, June 12, 1999
"Kosovians can move back in."—CNN Inside Politics, April 9, 1999
"It was just inebriating what Midland was all about then."—From a 1994 interview, as quoted in First Son, by Bill Minutaglio
