CRAWFORD, Texas, Aug 24 (AFP) - Candidate George W. Bush, seeking a second term as President of the United States, must sell himself to an electorate deeply divided over his record on combatting terrorism, the war in Iraq and the nation's faltering economic recovery.
"I'm asking for the vote because so much is at stake," he has been telling voters at gatherings the length and breadth of the country since the start of summer. "We have so much more to do to move this nation forward."
At 58, Bush is a very different man from the one who won the White House in 2000 by the thinnest of margins, after a long and bitter legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court.
Seen at the outset as inexperienced, in the shadow of his former president father, George H.W. Bush, and of his vice president, Dick Cheney, Bush went on to lead the country through some of its most perilous modern times: the devastating aftermath of September 11 attacks, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Although his popularity ratings in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks that killed some 3,000 people in New York and Washington soared to nearly 90 percent, Bush's bid to make himself a rallying beacon for the nation was never quite fulfilled.
His decision to make war on Iraq, based on weapons of mass destruction that were never found and dubious links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, alienated many Americans, not to mention traditional allies France and Germany.
His strident opposition to unrestricted abortion and same-sex marriage stirred resentment in progressive voters.
His tax cut program hit opposition from budgetary conservatives even within his own Republican Party.
The latest polls have Bush neck and neck with Democratic challenger John Kerry, 60, and his popularity rating is barely at 50 percent.
Bush nonetheless intends at next week's Republican National Convention in New York and in the final two months ahead of the November 2 election to stick with the formulas that have served him well in the past.
Backed by trusted political adviser Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney, Bush is rallying the party and actively courting its more reticent members, like Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has been given a coveted speaking slot at the convention.
He has been stepping up the pace of his grass roots electoral meetings, at which he cultivates a direct, folksy style appealing to the patriotic fibre of Americans.
A favorite Bush line at these events: "We understand freedom is not America's gift to the world. Freedom is the Almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world."
Bush's unabashed allusions to his Christian faith and frequent religious references, perhaps startling to foreign audiences, nonetheless play extremely well with the religious, conservative American right at the heart of his electorate.
He makes no secret of the fact that he does not like Washington, with its pomp and political posturing.
He frequently retreats to his ranch here on the quiet, rolling south Texas prairie, where he has worked the past week on his September 2 convention speech accepting the presidential nomination.
Bush is rarely seen in photos with his father, the first President Bush.
But a redoubtable symbolism looms large: the elder Bush was defeated after one term in office, a term during which he, too, took the nation to war against Iraq, during which he, too, tried in vain to rescue a faltering economy.