Even kids waiting for another decade to elapse before they'll be able to vote are sold on Gov. George W. Bush.

"He's a good man," says Monroeville's Andrew Patterson, 10. His sister Catherine, 8, is more specific. "He's pro-life," she says.

I ask Andrew if any of his classmates support Vice President Al Gore. "We're home-schooled," he says.

State Republicans are on stage getting the crowd juiced, leading cheers where the answer to questions about Gore or his running mate, Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., is a resounding "No!" and the questions about Bush and his No. 2, former defense secretary Dick Cheney meet with an enthusiastic "Yesssss!"

Jock jams blast from the loudspeakers: that "Are You Ready for This?" bass-blaster, and the Who's "We Won't Get Fooled Again." Ricky Martin's "The Cup of Life," a Bush campaign staple, adds some salsa to the entirely white-bread event.

"Pennsylvania is for Bush -- Big Time," reads one banner, alluding to Cheney's yes-man response to Bush's crude assessment of a New York Times reporter. No, the fight for Pennsylvania is not taking place here, but among the blue-collar Catholics in Philly and Pittsburgh, and in moderate Republican enclaves like Montgomery County outside Philadelphia. So Bush also spends Saturday in Philadelphia, where he meets with the head of the local Archdiocese, Cardinal Anthony Joseph Bevilaqua, and then holds a rally at a school in Montgomery County.

It’s a new little East Coast swing for Bush; Pennsylvania's 23 electoral votes are highly contested, though recent polls have Gore leading. Bush, his wife, Laura, and former joint chiefs chairman Gen. Colin Powell are en route from Dearborn, Mich., where they all appeared with Cheney at Ford Field earlier Saturday. That’s where a local Teamsters official gave Powell an unfortunate introduction as Adam Clayton Powell, New York's long-dead, flamboyant Democratic congressman.

More notably, it was there that Cheney, the former defense secretary, took up arms on behalf of his boss, who it was revealed Thursday had been arrested in 1976 at the age of 30 for driving under the influence of alcohol. Bush's sister Dorothy, then 17, was in the car, along with another underage friend, David Bremer, Bush's friend Pete Rousel, Australian tennis star John Newcombe, and his wife.

News of his arrest had been leaked to the press by Tom Connolly, the losing Democratic candidate for governor of Maine in 1998, which Bush cited in an interview Friday with the Fox News Channel as evidence of the whole incident being an example of "dirty tricks."

Likewise, in Dearborn, Cheney -- who himself has two DUI arrests under his rather expansive belt -- called the news report "typical last-minute acts of desperation. Frankly, I think we're all a little tired of the Clinton-Gore routine."

Powell, meanwhile, ordered the crowd: "Don't be distracted by the little sniping that comes in from the flanks."

That sniping would no doubt include the point that two years ago, Bush was asked by Dallas Morning News reporter Wayne Slater if he'd ever been arrested since 1968 -- the date of another arrest for misdemeanor theft. According to Slater, Bush said no, which is clearly a lie, though Bush disputes this recollection.

On Friday, Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes tried to argue that since Slater had been given the impression that Bush had been lying, Bush had actually been telling the truth.

"The reporter later told me that he was left with the impression that the governor in fact had been involved in some sort of incident involving alcohol," she said.

It was a remarkably Clintonian bit of parsing -- with a Bush twist. Americans should add to their already tested tolerance of political double-speak the Bush team's Madison Avenue conviction that if you repeat a phrase enough -- like "I'm a leader," or "compassionate conservative" -- the public will begin to accept the phrase, regardless of the deeds (or lack thereof) surrounding the rhetoric.

We saw a stellar example of this during a hastily scheduled press conference on Friday in Grand Rapids, Mich. There, Hughes called Bush "forthcoming" about his past five times, and asserted eight times that he had "acknowledged" his imperfect past.

Of course, the truth is that Bush has been anything but "forthcoming" about anything other than the vague idea that there's some "irresponsible" behavior in his past. He has yet to even release the military records that might shed light on his "missing year" of National Guard service. And he never "acknowledged" anything about the 1976 arrest until he was forced to on Thursday night.

Salon News A Salon-eye view of the day's news, with investigative reports, analysis and interviews with newsmakers.