Bush flashes charm, humor on 'Oprah;' Gore plays up medical privacy

Gore's arthritic dog reappears as campaign issue

By Ian Christopher McCaleb/CNN

CHICAGO (CNN) -- Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush used a nationally syndicated television talk show Tuesday to outline why his candidacy for the White House warrants serious consideration, saying his record as governor of Texas gives him a leg up on Vice President Al Gore.

Appearing on Tuesday's edition of "Oprah," Bush said he felt he had been called to run for the presidency -- even if there have been points throughout his lengthy campaign when he longed to return to his Texas ranch with his wife, Laura.

"There is a big call," Bush told program host Oprah Winfrey. "I am deeply concerned about the state of this country, concerned that some people are going to be left behind."

The Texas governor's appearance on the daytime talk show, which airs according to various station schedules across the country, follows Gore's by one week. Winfrey's long-running program is wildly popular with women -- a voting constituency among whom Bush hopes to broaden his appeal.

"I'm a proven leader," Bush said when asked why undecided voters should cast their ballots for him. "People should look at our record on education in the state of Texas, where minority test scores are among the best in the nation."

"I have an agenda that says we are going to elevate individuals, not empower the federal government," he added.

Bush appeared unusually relaxed throughout the hour-long live interview. He smiled throughout and showed bright flashes of the sense of the humor and congeniality that campaign staff and close friends have often praised in difficult weeks following the Republican National Convention, when Bush's poll numbers were at their highest.

Asked about his underlying motivation to run for the presidency, Bush said he only made his decision after being elected to his second term in the Texas governor's mansion. At no time before that had the notion crossed his mind, he insisted.

"I didn't think about it in college. Maybe I'd have behaved a little better," Bush said, making light of his reputation as a college party boy who garnered average grades through the course of his Ivy League undergrad years. Much of that reputation, Bush said later, was undeserved.

Life-changing decisions and family ties

Bush said his life changed when he decided to stop drinking on the morning after his 40th birthday. He did, he said, have an outright problem with alcohol.

"I made up my mind the next morning when on my jog that I was going to stop drinking," he said. "I haven't had a drink since."

Bush, his wife Laura and a number of friends had celebrated their 40th birthdays the previous night, and Bush said he "had a little too much to drink."

"Alcohol was beginning to compete for my affections," he told Winfrey.

A common misconception about his motivations, Bush said, was the idea that he was running for office on his father's name.

"I love my dad a lot, and I am proud to be his son," Bush said. "But that is not why I am running."

Pressed by Winfrey about the continuation of a Bush dynasty in Washington, Bush emphatically denied that he was seeking to bring the name back to that sort of prominence. "What you're suggesting," he told Winfrey, is that I would be running based on revenge."

Bush's father, former President Bush, was defeated in the 1992 election after his first term by then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and Gore, his vice presidential running mate.

"Revenge has such a negative tone to it," Bush said. "I couldn't get elected if I was seeking revenge."

When given the opportunity, Bush promoted his tax cut proposals in simple terms, telling one audience member, "If you're working and paying taxes, when it comes to the surplus, I think you should be putting money back in your pocket."

The declaration was met with an enthusiastic round of applause.

And, when speaking of his school days at Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts, Bush said he learned a valuable lesson about intelligence.

"There is book smart and the kind of smart that helps do calculus," he said. "But smart is also instinct and judgment and common sense. Smart comes in all kinds of different ways."

Day 2 of 'Blueprint' tour

Just a little over an hour after his "Oprah" appearance, Bush made a brief appearance at Chicago's Beethoven Elementary School to address the second segment of his "Blueprint for the Middle Class" -- education and school safety.

The blueprint, a 15-page document outlining a series of middle class-friendly initiatives introduced by the Republican candidate, was unveiled Monday in a Little Rock, Arkansas, speech.

Bush addresses his plans for education and school safety at Beethoven Elementary School in Chicago

The goal of the easy-to-digest document, Bush said Monday, is to show the average undecided voter how his planned policies will affect the life stages of each individual citizen.

At the Beethoven school, which Bush praised for its recent significant hikes in student achievement scores, the GOP nominee talked up his long-held plans to present teachers with the legal backing they will need to enforce classroom discipline. He said he planned to triple federal funding for "character education" programs.

"I am going to ask Congress to pass a teacher protection act," Bush told a small gathering of students and faculty. "If standards of discipline are enforced, teachers cannot be sued."

Bush has long maintained that too many teachers have been taken to court by opportunistic parents for enforcing basic discipline in their classrooms. Under his suggested law, teachers would be shielded from legal action in most circumstances.

"There should be a zero tolerance policy in the classroom," he said.

Bush added a new wrinkle to his character education proposals Tuesday, telling his school audience that he would like to establish a series of national "youth character awards" intended to reward actions of public service and exemplary behavior.

"We give such awards for football and basketball," he said. "I want to herald those young who display gold medal talents when it comes to character. I want to award not only academic excellence, but excellence when it comes to extraordinary acts of character."

The Texas governor has described his character education plan as devised to teach children the basic rules of "right and wrong" through the course of their public schools careers. Much of his initiative calls for the participation of faith-based groups and for the establishment of after-school activities.

Gore in California

Health insurance companies have become a favorite target for Al Gore as he has made his way across the country in recent days. Tuesday's subject-du-jour for the surging Democratic hopeful continued that trend, as Gore sought to curtail the marketing and other uses of medical information by such companies without the consent of their patients.

Speaking at a Los Angeles-area community center Tuesday afternoon, the vice president said legal restrictions must be put in place to protect the sanctity of an individual's medical records and the broader notion of personal privacy.

"It is wrong for the insurance companies and drug companies to sell your medical information, putting profits ahead of people," Gore told an audience of seniors and medical professionals. "You have a fundamental right to privacy, and no powerful interest should be allowed to sell it or take it away."

Gore discusses his concerns over maintaining privacy of medical recordshis speaks at the New Horizons Community Center in North Hills, California

Gore said as president he would push Congress to pass a law barring insurance companies, HMOs and other medical organizations from selling information from proprietary medical records without the consent of their patients. He said he would outlaw unauthorized dealing in all kinds of records, and give patients the right to sue over invasions of medical privacy.

During a one-on-one session with members his audience, numerous attendees took the microphone to tell stories of how they have been inundated with mail -- and electronic mail -- advertising drugs that could be prescribed to treat medical conditions from which they were suffering.

The time to act is now, Gore said, because the advent of new medical technologies could shift the consequences of medical records sales and distribution from nuisance mail to straight discrimination.

The mapping of the human genome, Gore continued, could yield significant risks for people who are genetically predisposed to certain diseases.

"What happens when you are able to take a single hair from someone and find out the entire genetic makeup of that individual, including whether or not there is a 10 percent higher than normal risk for lung cancer? Is that going to affect insurance rates?"

Gore said advances such as genetic mapping could yield great miracles, but use of that information must be limited. "Sometimes, it is not used in a scientific way at all."

"We are people, we are not commodities," Gore said.

Gore was scheduled to attend a fund-raiser in Silicon Valley on Tuesday night. He attended a high-profile fund-raising event in Los Angeles on Monday night, where he told many attending entertainment industry executives he expected their assistance as he sought to push Hollywood away from marketing practices that advertised adult-oriented offerings to minors.

More on prescriptions for dogs

Gore aides tried Tuesday to end the debate over whether the Democratic nominee fabricated the price of an arthritis medication taken by his mother in-law, and the pet version used by his dog.

Gore spokesman Chris Lehane said the candidate's mother in-law, Margaret Aitchison, pays $2.13 per pill for the prescription drug Lodine. He said the family pays about 92 cents per pill for Gore's 14-year-old black Labrador Shiloh.

On Monday, Gore aides admitted Gore had used information from a House Democratic study, and not from his family medical bills, when he compared the costs of the medicine for his mother in-law and dog in a Florida campaign appearance last month.

At the time, Gore said the prescription cost for Mrs. Aitchison $108 per month, while Lodine was available to pets for just $37 a month.

The House drug study presumed a per-pill cost of $1.21 for the human version of Lodine, and 42 cents per pill for the pet version.

Gore aides still could not say whether Mrs. Aitchison receives any insurance coverage for her Lodine, which would presumably bring down its cost. Lehane said he would release that information once he had it.

Shiloh, of course, is not insured.

The Lodine story first appeared in monday's Boston Globe, and was quickly sent around to reporters by the Bush campaign as an example of Gore's tendency to embellish or fabricate stories.

The Globe story also questioned whether Gore had made up the fact that his mother in-law and dog took the same drug, but Gore aides confirmed Monday that they do.

CNN's Beth Fouhy and the Associated Press contributed to this report.