“Will the highways on the Internet become more few?” — Concord, N.H., Jan. 29, 2000
“This is Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. It’s what you do when you run for president. You gotta preserve.” — Speaking during “Perseverance Month” at Fairgrounds Elementary School in Nashua, N.H. — As quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 2000
“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.” — Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000
“We ought to make the pie higher.” — South Carolina Republican Debate, Feb. 15, 2000
“I understand small business growth. I was one.” — New York Daily News, Feb. 19, 2000
“It is not Reaganesque to support a tax plan that is Clinton in nature.” — Los Angeles, Feb. 23, 2000
“I thought how proud I am to be standing up beside my dad. Never did it occur to me that he would become the gist for cartoonists.” (sic). “If you’re sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign.” — Hilton Head, S.C., Feb. 16, 2000
“How do you know if you don’t measure if you have a system that simply suckles kids through?” — Explaining the need for educational accountability in Beaufort, S.C., Feb. 16, 2000
“I’ve changed my style somewhat, as you know. I’m less I pontificate less, although it may be hard to tell it from this show. And I’m more interacting with people.” (sic) “I think we need not only to eliminate the tollbooth to the middle class, I think we should knock down the tollbooth.” — Nashua, N.H., as quoted by Gail Collins in the New York Times, Feb. 1, 2000
“What I am against is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think vulcanize society. So I don’t know how that fits into what everybody else is saying, their relative positions, but that’s my position.” — Quoted by Molly Ivins, the San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 21, 2000 What!?
When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were,” he said. “It was us vs. them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.” — Iowa Western Community College, Jan 21, 2000
“The administration I’ll bring is a group of men and women who are focused on what’s best for America, honest men and women, decent men and women, women who will see service to our country as a great privilege and who will not stain the house.” — Des Moines Register debate, Iowa, Jan. 15, 2000
“I read the newspaper.” — In answer to a question about his reading habits, New Hampshire Republican Debate, Dec. 2, 1999
“The important question is, How many hands have I shaked?” — Answering a question about why he hasn’t spent more time in New Hampshire, in the New York Times, Oct. 23, 1999
“I don’t remember debates. I don’t think we spent a lot of time debating it. Maybe we did, but I don’t remember.” — On discussions of the Vietnam War when he was an undergraduate at Yale, Washington Post, July 27, 1999
“The only thing I know about Slovakia is what I learned first-hand from your foreign minister, who came to Texas.” — To a Slovak journalist as quoted by Knight Ridder News Service, June 22, 1999. Bush’s meeting was with Janez Drnovsek, the prime minister of Slovenia.
“If the East Timorians decide to revolt, I’m sure I’ll have a statement.” — Quoted by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, June 16, 1999
“It was just inebriating what Midland was all about then.” — From a 1994 interview, as quoted in First Son, by Bill Minutaglio
