But not this time. David Wilkins, speaker of the House in South Carolina, said he's concerned about turnout because so many Republican voters in his state think that Vice President Gore has no chance to defeat Bush there. Many of the GOP leaders at the meeting were veterans of decades of political combat, and their confidence now is due partly to their grim memories of the last two Republican presidential campaigns. Four years ago this summer, plenty of Republicans were saying privately that Bob Dole had little chance to beat President Clinton. Eight years ago this month, worry about President Bush's re-election campaign against Clinton was already building.
People are excited, and they're hungry.
A few people confessed to concerns. And I worry about how we'll make our convention relevant to people. Bush fired up his audience with a biting commentary on Gore. Instead of reinventing government, Vice President Gore continues to reinvent himself. Just this week he decided to attack the Congress, even though he himself is the president of the Senate.