The Post-Philly Express: Bush on a roll.

Aboard the Bush-Cheney train, in Michigan

After a week of R&B acts and Latin singers and "compassion videos" in the muggy confines of Philadelphia's First Union Center, the Bush rally outside the Michigan Railroad Museum in Durand, comes as a liberation. The railroad building is not "authentic"-like so much of the made-for-video contrivance of Philadelphia-but actually authentic, a low-slung station of the sort you see in hundreds of small towns. The sky may not be as "big" as in the Midland, Texas, of Bush campaign lore, but it's blue and expansive. And a huge crowd isn't taking stage cues, but singing dueling Michigan and Michigan State fight songs and occasionally baiting reporters ("The press is to the left!" shouts the throng standing immediately to the right of the media stand).

Bush arrives when the first two cars of his train-two elegant burgundy Norfolk Southern cars-inch out from behind the station. W. is jacketless, in a white shirt and tie, waving from a platform. The crowd shakes red, white, and blue pom-poms, and another train engine parked near the station lets out high, long blasts from its whistle. Phrases from W.'s convention speech are painted on signs at his every stop: "Help Is On the Way," "Not Long Now," "Honesty Is NOT a Risky Scheme." The success of that speech has given Bush himself a bounce. For the first time, he seems almost electric on the stump, mixing phrases from his convention address into his traditional campaign material, hitting his applause lines just right in rousing crowd-pleasers.

Dick Cheney is the perfect straight man for W., affectless, delivering his brief introductory remarks in a monotone, like William Shatner singing in a Priceline ad. In Durand, when a "It won't be long now!" chant goes up from the crowd as he speaks, Cheney chuckles, seeming embarrassed at the silliness of it all. In comparison, Bush sounds like William Jennings Bryan, nearly shouting from the first word. Today, he is flailing at Al Gore for going along with President Clinton's veto of the marriage-penalty bill. "Instead of standing on the side of families," Bush says, "he stands on the side of big government. If I had been president, I would have signed that bill." A roar from the crowd, and chants of "Bush! Bush! Bush!" W. starts to speak again, but thinks better of it and pauses to let the chant run its course.

Then he dives in again: "Our campaign says listen to those workers that are UAW workers, listen to the teachers, listen to the Americans who are working their hearts out to feed their families. There's a clear difference: We believe that people ought to be trusted with their own money. It's conservative to cut taxes! It's compassionate to share money with the people who pay the bills!" Bush! Bush! Bush! The pom-poms are thrashing away. It's one of the few instances on the campaign trail with Bush when the only appropriate commentary is: Wow.

Bush came barreling out of Philadelphia dubbed a new kind of Republican by much of the media, but hit the tracks with an old kind of Republican message. At four Michigan whistle stops, he pounds-along with the usual pablum about how proud he is of Cheney and Laura Bush-on taxes, rebuilding the military, education reform and local control of schools, and cleansing Washington of Clinton-Gore. His stump spiel could be delivered by Tom DeLay-except Bush is riling up crowds in the name of Washington comity. Bush swears that he is waging his campaign to make love, not war.

Small "Change the Tone" signs are affixed high somewhere at every Bush rally. In his convention speech, W. disavowed any interest in the partisan fights in Washington of the last two years. This galls impeachment purists who apparently believe that if the House managers could rush just once more into the breach to explain it's not the adultery, it's the perjury, Clinton would finally get his historical deserts. The Bush campaign, though, wants to leverage the very public sentiments that helped Clinton thrive during impeachment-a distaste for partisanship and political argument altogether-into a case against the president and his successor. The problem with Clinton, according to this thinking, is that he has created a nasty atmosphere in Washington, a fatal embrace of Clintonistas and Clinton-haters that, among other things, has forced voters to think too much about Bill Clinton.

This is no doubt a "soft" anti-Clinton argument. But it's enough for party regulars. When Dick Cheney deadpans his "We're all a little tired of the Clinton-Gore routine," crowds burst into "No More Gore!" There is a tinderbox enthusiasm to Bush's post-convention crowds. At a Pontiac rally, Bush supporters who showed up an hour early practice their chants in anticipation of his arrival. In tiny Schoolcraft, 7,500 people jam into a wedge of a rail yard. Boy Scouts stand on the roof of a truck. Kids clamber up the sides of idle railroad cars for a view. It might be the most fervent GOP campaign event since John McCain's crowds in New Hampshire. From the top of a double-decker car with huge windows as the Bush train pulls in, one reporter skeptical of Bush can't help marveling at the tightly packed crowd, tinged with the blue of Bush signs: "Look at that!"

The security of Bush's base makes it easier for him to reach out to independents and Democrats. Gone are the days in South Carolina when Bush disavowed even having anything to say to Democrats. In Durand, he's introduced by a member of UAW Local 659 whose father introduced JFK at a Flint, Mich., rally 40 years ago. "This is a campaign that welcomes Democrats," Bush enthuses after the introduction. "Our message isn't just a Republican message. Our message speaks to working people from all walks of life. And for all the union members out there, come on into this campaign!" Bush's ostentatious bipartisanship works on almost every level-it fits his Texas record, it has an anti-Clinton-Gore edge, and, of course, it has potential appeal to independents and Democrats.

How much is W. giving away to make this appeal? His education agenda is a mixed bag, as he's surrendered on the spending front; he's capitulated on prescription drugs; he's actively bad on immigration, race preferences, and bilingual education. But he is firm on abortion and guns, strong on taxes, bold and innovative on entitlements and missile defense, and he's waging his own redeemed-baby-boomer version of the culture war. Listen closely enough to his convention acceptance speech and there's a (very thin) anti-government line running throughout, as government can't be trusted to take our tax money, provide for our retirement-or infuse the country with generosity and responsibility.

"We get to see the great strengths of America," Bush says on the stump. "It lies not in the halls of government, but in the heartland of America." And the Bush train provides a perfect backdrop for the sentiment. It does "slow rolls" through Michigan towns too small to rank a full-fledged stop, as gauzy cliches of Americana straight from a Bruce Springsteen or John Cougar Mellencamp video pass by: pick-up trucks stopped at railroad crossings with kids hanging out the windows waving Bush-Cheney signs; a girl peering over her wooden backyard fence; a red fire-truck blocking off an intersection so a cluster of Bush supporters can wave their American flags; two doughy older women who have set up lawn chairs on a patch of grass, chatting, then waving as the train rolls on. In the immediate aftermath of Philadelphia, Bush is campaigning on the sunrise side of the mountain.