Gore, Bush Kickoff Labor Day Tours

Sept. 4 -- It’s the end of summer but the start of the presidential campaign as Al Gore and George W. Bush labored for votes in key swing states on this holiday.

Democrat Gore and his running mate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, continued a “round the clock workathon,” early today, visiting with firefighters and early risers in Tampa, Fla., in the pre-dawn hours.

Reaching out to union members in other key swing states, Gore is also marching in a Labor Day parade in Pittsburgh and greeting union families in Kentucky.

Meanwhile, Bush was trying to inject new life into his sagging campaign in the key state of Illinois. Asked about Gore’s 24-hour work schedule, a subtle reminder of the whispers that Bush doesn’t work very hard, the Texas governor said, “He’ll run his campaign and I’ll run mine.”

Campaigning in Naperville, Ill., Bush said, “It’s time to elect folks that have some good common sense.

“It’s time to elect people who say what they mean and mean what they say. It’s time to get rid of all those words like ‘no controlling legal authority,’” referring to a phrase Gore once used to explain campaign fund-raising practices in the 1996 re-election.

Blunt Talking

Not long before launching into a speech on the need for “plainspoken Americans in the White House,” Bush was pretty blunt himself, using an expletive when talking to his running mate Dick Cheney about the New York Times’ Adam Clymer, one of the reporters who has been covering his campaign.

Bush leaned over to Cheney at a Labor Day rally and said, “There’s Adam Clymer, major league a------ from the New York Times.”

Cheney responded, “Oh yeah, he is, big time.”

Little did these two candidates for the highest offices in the land know that their microphones were on and their remarks were being broadcast to members of the audience and to the press corps. Karen Hughes, Bush’s spokeswoman, later said the remarks were “awhispered aside to his running mate. It was not intended as apublic comment.”