President George W. Bush pledged "a safer world and a more hopeful America" as he accepted his party's nomination for a second term in office and plunged into the final two months of his re-election campaign. In the city that transformed his presidency three Septembers ago, Bush declared to a raucous Republican convention crowd: "We have fought the terrorists across the earth _ not for pride, not for power, but because the lives of our citizens are at stake. ... We have led, many have joined, and America and the world are safer." Bush wasted no time in getting back on the campaign trail, leaving heavily Democratic New York soon after his hour-long speech Thursday night for the more politically promising battleground of Pennsylvania. He planned a Friday morning rally in the Scranton area, with stops later in the day in Wisconsin and Iowa. Bush stood a few miles (kilometers) from where two hijacked planes destroyed the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, to make a nationally broadcast appeal to Americans for another term. "In the last four years, you and I have come to know each other. Even when we don't agree, at least you know what I believe and where I stand," he said. He boasted of first-term accomplishments, outlined plans for a second-term agenda and criticized challenger John Kerry on both domestic and foreign policy counts. "My opponent's policies are dramatically different from ours," he said, calling Kerry's agenda "policies of the past." "Voters will make a choice based on the records we have built, the convictions we hold and the vision that guides us forward," Bush said, standing alone on an elevated theater-in-the-round platform in Madison Square Garden. --MORE 1202 Local Time 0902 GMT
