ITTSBURGH - Last week, Barbara Bush hit the campaign trail to speak out for her son. On Wednesday, John McCain flew to Florida to stump with Governor George W. Bush.
So it seemed fitting yesterday that Bush did not stand alone while making a speech about leadership, but was instead joined by retired General Colin Powell as the governor took on the Clinton administration and lobbed a series of personal rockets at Al Gore.
Speaking as fiercely as ever about his opponent's character, Bush mocked the vice president's varied campaign styles, accusing him of shifting with the political winds and of seeking office only for selfish gain. Against a billboard bearing the slogan ''Responsible Leadership,'' Bush contrasted Gore's style with his own, saying that ''when you hold on to power for power's sake, you cannot govern.
''I hope when it's all said and done the American people will realize my opponent's campaign is a fitting end to the Clinton-Gore years,'' he said. ''They are going out as they came in: Their guide, the nightly polls. Their goal, the morning headlines. Their legacy, the fruitless search for a legacy.''
The harsh rhetoric and carefully arranged setting were further reflections of how tight the race remains, with daily polling numbers indicating a virtual tie just 11 days before the election. And the introduction by Powell, a popular figure whom Bush has made a centerpiece of his all-star lineup of supporters, was no afterthought; references to his possible service in a future Bush White House were written into the governor's prepared text.
Despite his jab at Gore's reliance on polls, Bush aides displayed a keen interest in several polls themselves, making certain reporters were aware of two Pennsylvania surveys that showed Bush with a slight advantage. At the same time, the campaign renewed its efforts to cast California as a possible battleground, citing new polls and releasing the text of a TV ad launched in the state. Bush plans to visit California - still considered by Gore a safe bet - on Monday.
Bush aides neglected to mention a new Ohio poll giving Gore a slight edge, but that unexpected development was reflected in Bush's schedule, which included a hastily arranged trip to Toledo last night.
Even Bush, appearing confident and performing as vigorously as ever, displayed a touch of wonder that the end of the race is near. ''We're coming down to the wire,'' he told supporters.
Bush repeated his call to usher in a ''responsibility era,'' in which officials would adhere to a moral code and set an example for the rest of the country. Veering far from policy issues at times, Bush played off the troubles that have dogged the vice president.
''In my administration, we will make it clear there is the controlling authority of conscience,'' Bush said. ''We will make people proud again so that Americans who love their country can once again respect their government.''
For his part, Powell sought to deflect concerns that Bush lacks the experience to direct the nation's foreign policy and command its military.
''He understands that the first responsibility of the president is to serve as commander in chief of the armed forces,'' Powell told the crowd.
Bush also continued to attack Gore on Social Security, even as he offered a defense against new criticism of his own proposal to fix the retirement benefit system.
According to a nonpartisan group of financial specialists, both candidates' plans for Social Security are flawed, but the Bush proposal would lead to a return of federal budget deficits within 15 years. The American Academy of Actuaries, in a report released yesterday, said the Bush plan to allow individual retirement savings accounts would make it impossible to also pay off the national debt by 2016, as Bush has said he would.
Neither candidate is offering a permanent solution, the report concluded. Senior academy fellow Ron Gebhardtsbauer described the proposals as ''incomplete, at times internally inconsistent, potentially misleading.''
A senior Bush official dismissed the report, saying there are ''a number of faulty assumptions in the study.''
Bush's communications director, Karen Hughes, said the report assumed that all younger workers would take advantage of the offer to invest 2 percent of their payroll tax into a retirement account. The Bush campaign, on the other hand, is making its calculations based on the assumption that only 95 percent of workers would do so.
Bush, speaking to a group made up mostly of seniors at the Soldiers and Sailors Museum here, tried to turn the tables on Gore, saying he would saddle future generations with massive debt by not revolutionizing Social Security now.
''The crisis is coming - in the red within two decades, bankrupt by 2037,'' Bush said.
Bush has not released details explaining how his far-more-dramatic proposal would make Social Security solvent, but he has said he expects the current surplus and the future yields from the stock market to have a more permanent effect than Gore's plans. Gore would use the surplus to pay down the national debt, then transfer the interest savings back into Social Security.
