AMERICA/Conor O'Clery: It's hard to get George Bush at home these days. The President has been making daily forays around the country to raise money for Republican candidates in mid-term elections next month.
This week he was in Florida. The fourth-largest American state holds special meaning for Mr Bush. Here he secured the presidency after a month-long stand-off with Al Gore. His brother Jeb Bush is governor, and is looking vulnerable against Democrat Bill McBride after riding high in the polls.
So the President travelled to Daytona Beach on Thursday to give his younger brother a ride in his limousine and to raise $1 million in campaign cash at a gathering in a local mansion.
It was not a good day for the Bush family, however. As the brothers embraced for the cameras, the governor's daughter Noelle (25) was being led away in handcuffs from an Orlando court to serve a 10-day sentence for possession of crack cocaine. Criticised for not being in the courtroom, Jeb Bush said he did not want to bring more media attention to his daughter's case. While Noelle Bush will spend the next 10 days in a cell, critics point to much harsher sentences in other crack cocaine cases.
The constant attention of George Bush to Florida - this was his 11th visit - could backfire. If Jeb is turfed out of the governor's house, it will be seen as a repudiation of the President, and will energise the Democrats for 2004, while putting a stake through the heart of the Grand Old Party. Bush's visits also revive memories of the hanging chad debacle. Democrats in Florida are hell bent on avenging Al Gore. The party's national committee chairman Terry McAuliffe gets big cheers as he travels the country with his vow to "take out one Bush at a time". They are backing McBride, now level with Jeb Bush, with everything they have got.
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While the President was in Florida, Bill McBride was at a fund-raiser in the Washington home of Smith and Elizabeth Bagley, a splendid Georgetown mansion with indoor swimming pool where John Hume often stayed.
Smith Bagley, a grandson of tobacco magnate R.J. Reynolds, is one of the Democratic Party's most generous donors, and Elizabeth Bagley was President Clinton's ambassador to Portugal. Yesterday the folksy 57-year-old retired lawyer went on to a New York lunch hosted by Bill Clinton. The two events should give him the money he needs. McBride told the cheque-writing guests in the Smith Bagleys that Jeb Bush had five times more money than he, but there were only so many television ads that one could buy. Whether he knew it or not before, McBride has been classified as an Irish-American by Stella O'Leary of Irish-American Democrats in Washington, who is heading for Miami/Fort Lauderdale in the final days to get out the Irish vote.
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With the sniper picking off victims in Maryland, guns have become a big issue in the Townsend-Ehrlich fight. Before the shootings started, the Republican candidate said he would "review" the state's gun laws if elected, i.e., make things easier for gun-lovers. In the past he has voted to overturn a ban on assault-style weapons. Now he is on the defensive. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is reminding voters of his record in television advertisements and has called for expanding ways to track guns nationwide through ballistic fingerprints. The National Rifle Association is opposed. It claims this would be tantamount to gun registration, which would be the first step towards confiscation of firearms. The White House questioned the technology. Spokesman Ari Fleischer said new gun laws were not needed and in the case of the sniper, "the issue is values". This prompted media comments that the issue was Republican dependency on NRA funding and next day Fleischer said Mr Bush did after all favour a study of fingerprinting.
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The sniper shots are also reverberating in Hollywood. 20th Century Fox has got cold feet about releasing the $12 million thriller Phone Booth, starring Irish actor Colin Farrell. In the movie, a sniper, played by Kiefer Sutherland, lures passers-by into a phone booth and threatens to pick them off if they hang up. The film was to open on November 15th but has been postponed indefinitely. Last year the same fate befell the Miramax screen version of Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American, which was completed the week before 9/11. The theme of the The Quiet American, in which Michael Caine plays a foreign correspondent, was considered too provocative in the aftermath of the attacks as it portrays an American agent organising acts of terrorism in 1950s Saigon. The movie will however open in New York at the end of November.
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Confusing events on the screen and in real life prevented New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's marching in Monday's Columbus Day Parade in Manhattan.
The organisers got a court order preventing the mayor marching with friends Dominic Chianese and Lorraine Bracco, cast members from The Sopranos, because they represented negative stereotypes of Italian-Americans.
Instead Bloomberg marched alone in another parade in the Bronx. All along the route disapppointed fans shouted, "Hey, Mayor! Where are the Sopranos?"
Would he now skip the St Patrick's Day Parade which prohibits gay groups marching under their own banner? In his personal opinion it was a shame and the ban was wrong, Bloomberg replied, but: "Having said that, my respect for the Irish community is such that I will march in that parade."
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Bloomberg, who is independently wealthy, complained to Secretary of State Colin Powell about diplomats owing $21 million in parking fines in New York. Powell, speaking at a dinner on Thursday, replied: "Mike, give me a break, Write a cheque to yourself, you can afford it."