Director and actor Ron Silver talks about his support for the Bush administration’s response to the attacks of Sept. 11 in New York and Washington and why the issue of terrorism remains important to him now. This video was shot by Inside the Tent contributor John Steward.

Reuters Inside the Tent equipped more than 40 delegates and other attendees in St. Paul and the Democratic National Convention last week in Denver with video cameras to capture the conventions from the ground up. Steward is not an employee of Reuters, and any views expressed are his own.

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WASHINGTON, Pa. - So maybe saying nice things about Hillary Clinton at a Republican rally isn’t such a good idea.
 
John McCain’s new vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, acknowledged the New York senator on Saturday when reflecting on her new found role as a national candidate.
 
The reaction from a large chunk of the audience: boos.
 
“I think as well today of two other women who came before me in national elections, and I can’t begin this great effort without honoring the achievements of Geraldine Ferraro back in 1984 and of course, Senator Hillary Clinton,” Palin said.
    
Boo. Boo. Boo.
    
So much for trying to win over disaffected Clinton supporters. They, apparently, are not turning up to McCain-Palin rallies.
    
But no matter. The Alaska governor breezed on with a nod to her own historic bid, in Clinton’s wake.
    
“It was rightly noted in Denver this week that Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America,” she said. “But thankfully, as it turns out, the women of America aren’t finished yet, and the voters will shatter that glass ceiling once and for all.”
    
The McCain campaign has made a concerted effort to win over Clinton backers who were upset at her loss in the Democratic primary to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.
    
Palin’s presence on the ticket puts the mother of five in line to make history as the first female U.S. vice president if she and McCain beat Obama and his running mate, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, in the Nov. 4 election.

Photo credit: Reuters/John Gress (Palin campaigns in Washington)

DENVER - “Saving the world is my hobby, I guess you could say, because I don’t play golf,” said Rick Fitzgerald, wearing a striped prison costume and holding a papier-mâché Dick Cheney head.

Moments earlier he had been wearing the Cheney head outside the Democratic National Convention chanting “Cheney in chains!” and shaking his plastic shackles for an obliging New York Post photographer. A papier-mâché Condoleezza Rice head sat at his feet.

Fitzgerald, who drove in from Longmont, Colo., was joined outside the Pepsi Center on Sunday by about a hundred protesters. But Fitzgerald doesn’t like the term.

“I’m an advocate,” he said. “We’re not protesting anything. We’re advocating for democracy.”

The convention to nominate Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential candidate has drawn tens of thousands of delegates and journalists to Denver, along with hundreds of others who also want to make their voices heard.

“It’s awesome,” cried a spiky-haired young woman in a pink t-shirt as she surveyed the colorful protests. “The whole world is watching.”

What the world saw was a brigade of costumed protesters carrying colorful signs — some hand-lettered, some professionally printed — with demands that included the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, the impeachment of George W. Bush and sustainable development all over the world.

Many of the protestors plan to continue on to St. Paul for the Republican National Convention next week.

Bob Kunst of Miami (left) was one of the few anti-Obama protesters, with a sign reading “Obama is bad for America and Israel,” to which he’d added a second, smaller poster reading “Democrats not united. Biden can’t help!”

Despite being outnumbered, Kunst said he was surprised by the positive reaction he received in Denver, with supportive comments from people driving by outweighing the negative ones.

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PHOENIX - Part of the drill when running for the highest office in the United States is simply looking  and sounding  presidential.

Cue John McCain. The Arizona senator and Republican presidential candidate started a weekly radio address on Saturday, modeled after President George W. Bush’s regular broadcast ritual.

“Good morning. I’m John McCain, and this week I’ve been on the road in Colorado, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin,” the candidate said in his first address, according to a copy of the remarks.

“I’ve been holding town hall meetings to talk over the subject on most everyone’s minds these days – our slowing economy.”

McCain went on to review his week, speaking about the economy and his proposals to wean the nation from its dependence on foreign oil.

No mention was made of comments by a top economic adviser, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, who described the United States as “a nation of whiners” in a mental recession.

McCain did get a few jabs in at his opponent, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, though.

“In an economic downturn, the worst of all ideas is to raise taxes. And Senator Obama will do just that,” McCain said.

He ended by saying the country had beat longer odds during challenging circumstances in the past. “Very soon, we’re going to get this economy running again at full strength,” he said.

“Thanks for listening.”   

 Photo credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst; McCain addresses League of United Latin American Citizens in Washington, D.C., July 7, 2008.

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WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush, despite record low job approval ratings, made a rare public appearance on Wednesday to help Michigan Republicans raise money for the November campaign and he used it to mock the campaign themes of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
    
Bush never mentioned Obama’s name but used the Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s name 11 times throughout his 22 minutes of remarks to about 300 supporters in Livonia, Mich.
 
Obama has repeatedly used the words “hope” and “change” as themes of his campaign and to bash the Bush administration in his bid capture the White House in November. But Bush tried to turn the tables on Obama using his own words against him.
 
“The other side talks a lot about ‘hope,’ and that sums up their Iraq policy pretty well: They want to retreat from Iraq and hope nothing bad happens,” Bush said. “But wishful thinking is no way to fight a war and to protect the American people.”
 
On change, Bush said Democrats once favored lower taxes, believed in “common sense American values” and that “America should pay any price and bear any burden in the defense of liberty — but they have changed.”
 
“This isn’t the kind of change the American people want,” Bush said. Americans want change that make their lives better, their country safer. That requires changing the party control of the Congress.”

Republicans face an uphill battle retaking control of the House of Representatives because numerous lawmakers are retiring or seeking another office, while in the Senate they must defend 23 seats and Democrats have only 12 seats to guard.

Bush has made numerous appearances on the campaign trail to help Republican candidates raise money, but almost all of them in the last few months have been behind closed doors (the White House says their policy is to keep fundraisers at private residences closed to the press). Last week Bush made a public appearance in Washington to help the Republican congressional and Senate campaign committees raise some $21.5 million.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick in Livonia, Mich. 

- Photo credit: Jim Young (Bush speaking to supporters at a fundraiser in Michigan.)
 

WASHINGTON - Hankering for a history lesson on the Bush presidency from a Democratic point of view? Then look for the “Bush Legacy Tour” bus, which will be visiting communities across the country from now until the November presidential elections. 

The liberal Americans United for Change activist group launched the national tour on Tuesday with much fanfare and a lunchtime barbeque in front of the AFL-CIO union building a block away from the White House.

It’s a 28-ton, 45-foot long, bio-diesel-powered museum on wheels featuring interactive exhibits “on the worst policy failures that grew out of the Bush/conservative agenda,” touts the group.

The group has broader ambitions than just sharing its views on George W. Bush’s presidency. It is zeroing in on the conservative thinking Republican presidential candidate John McCain represents, said the group’s president Brad Woodhouse. 

“We are really talking about an ideology that Bush in many cases was a vessel for,” he said.

The bus features exhibits on Bush’s economic policies, the Iraq war, his administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina and a gasoline pump comparing the price when Bush took office to what it costs to fill up now.

Not in the mood for a liberal history lesson? McCain sent a letter to supporters on Tuesday announcing a contest for a ride on his “Straight Talk Express” bus for some lucky donor.         

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- Photo credit: Americans United for Change

DALLAS - It’s tough to think of everybody sometimes.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain held a fundraiser in Dallas on Monday and kicked off his remarks by praising many of the leaders that Texas had produced.

There was Kay Bailey Hutchison, a fellow senator who accompanied McCain on his plane from Washington.

John Tower got a shout-out, as did Phil Gramm, who McCain described as his dearest friend and the smartest senator he had ever known.

“This state has a legacy of sending great senators to the United States Senate,” McCain said.

Hmmm. Any other leaders from Texas come to mind?

“The state of Texas has provided great representation in the United States Senate,” he said. “So — and in the White House of the United States of America as well. I forgot to mention that.”

McCain has at times sought to distance himself from George W. Bush, a Texan, but he said on Monday the president deserved credit for the fact that the United States had not seen another terrorist attack on its soil since September 11, 2001.

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WASHINGTON - Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan, whose explosive new book brimming with withering criticism of his former bosses in Bush administration, said he is thinking about voting for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

In an interview Thursday night with MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” the former spokesman for President George W. Bush said he was “intrigued by what Sen. Obama has been running on about changing the way Washington works.” 

In his tell-all book, “What Happened — Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” presents himself as a one-time true Bush believer who mistakenly fell in line behind a propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq.

McClellan said he also has respect for Republican candidate John McCain “for the way he has worked across the aisle with Democrats.” He says he is still considering who to support.

“I’m going to take my time and think it through,” McClellan told Olbermann, a harsh critic of Bush and his conservative allies.

McClellan began a publicity tour for his book on Thursday and gave his first television interviews to NBC, which has come under fire from the White House for its handling of a recent interview with Bush and comments he made about Iran.

BUCYRUS, Kan. - Ah, the power of the presidency on the campaign trail.

President George W. Bush swooped in on Thursday to help Kansas State Sen. Nick Jordan roughly double the amount of money he has raised for his campaign to knock off Democratic Rep. Dennis Moore.

Jordan has raised about $388,000 through the end of March according to Federal Election Commission records. That’s in contrast to the almost $1 million that four-term Moore has raised in an effort to keep his seat in a fairly moderate district that includes numerous suburbs of Kansas City.

Bush helped Jordan and the Kansas Republican Party raise at least $435,000, with the lion’s share of the money going to the candidate, according to his campaign manager Dustin Olson.

But in a sign that Bush’s low popularity ratings could be a drag on Republican candidates, the fundraiser was closed to reporters so no images of the Jordan and the president were shot. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/George Frey

PARK CITY, Utah - Republican White House hopeful John McCain wants help from President George W. Bush to raise money for his campaign, but has done plenty to downplay the unpopular president’s presence on the trail.
 
Bush headlined three closed-door fundraisers in Arizona and Utah on Tuesday and Wednesday, hauling in millions of dollars for McCain but there was only a brief public glimpse of the two men together, for less than a minute. Plus, McCain skipped two of the events.
 
Bush’s fundraiser in Arizona with McCain was originally scheduled to be open to  reporters, but McCain’s campaign keeps its fundraisers closed to the press so the event was moved to a private home to keep it out of the public eye.
 
McCain’s campaign also refused to release any details about how much Bush was helping raise at the three events, but the one with McCain present brought in roughly $2.5 million, according to sources close to the campaign who declined to be identified.
 
Details from the other two fundraisers were scarce, though the one Wednesday evening in the posh ski resort area of Park City, Utah, was hosted by Mitt Romney, a former investment banker who had been a McCain rival in the hunt for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
 
Democrats have tried to paint McCain as no different than the current White House occupant, arguing that the Arizona senator would represent a “third term” of Bush if elected to the White House in November, citing his steadfast support of Bush’s plan for the Iraq war and making tax cuts permanent.
 
In addition to limiting public exposure with Bush, McCain has differed with him on how to address climate change and said he would pursue nuclear arms reduction talks with Russia and China as part of a foreign policy that brings back “broad-minded internationalism and determined diplomacy.”
 
The growing distance between the two brings up the question of how McCain will handle Bush at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul in early September.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (McCain sees Bush off at the Phoenix airport after a private fundraiser.)