Bush, Cheney hit the tracks

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney stormed into the Midwest on Friday,hoping to transfer the energy generated by the Republican NationalConvention into popular support in a part of the country that coulddecide the outcome of the November election.

In Pittsburgh, the two men boarded a campaign train that took themto a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Friday afternoon and will carrythem through parts of Michigan and Illinois over the weekend.

The Republican ticket was taking part in a tradition ofpresidential politics-the post-convention campaign swing by a party'stwo top candidates in an attempt to sustain the excitement of thenomination pageant. Bill Clinton and Al Gore did that with greatsuccess in 1992, leaving the Democratic National Convention in NewYork at the head of a bus caravan that carried them to St. Louis.

That began a campaign that drove Bush's father from the WhiteHouse.

"This convention has given us tremendous momentum," said KarenHughes, Bush's communications director. "We're traveling key, swing,battleground states and using the trip to capitalize on the momentumthat we built in Philadelphia."

It was no accident that the Republicans began their campaign inthe Midwest and likely will end it here. The four states that Bushand Cheney will visit on this first swing account for 84 electoralvotes, more than 30 percent of the 270 electoral votes needed to winthe presidency. The states usually are closely contested and can holdthe key to the outcome in a close election.

Aboard his campaign plane on the way to Pittsburgh to begin thetrain trip, Bush rejected criticism from Democrats that his attacksthe night before on Clinton and Gore violated his pledge to have apositive, uplifting convention.

"When I say I'm going to bring honor and dignity to the WhiteHouse, that's what I'm going to do," he said. "And if people drawconclusions other than that, so be it."

Bush argued that many of his references to Gore were meant to behumorous, including his reference to the vice president's claim tohave invented the Internet. "The idea of needling the opponent withgood humor, that's what American politics should be about, as opposedto trying to tear people down and distort," Bush said. "And I'm goingto keep pointing out differences. And I will do so in a respectfulway."