Ellington

The National Legacy Bus Tour came to Jackson Wednesday, sarcastically touting what it considered President George Bush's stellar record on economic and environmental issues, the war in Iraq and other hot topics.

The tour bus is a 2008 Prevost XL, running on bio-diesel and stocked with exhibit topics plainly aligned against the current president, with Bush's face splashed across both sides.

Julie Blust, press secretary for the Bush Legacy Tour, makes no bones about the purpose of the vehicle.

"We're here to show people what Bush has accomplished during his time in Washington. We're here to show everybody what exactly is his legacy," she said.

The bus is the brainchild of Americans United for Change, a progressive issue-advocacy group that declared war on Bush's 2005 attempt to privatize Social Security. Bush's effort proved unpopular with many voters, who shot down the prospect. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped another 300 points that day, but Blust said she gets no bitter pleasure out of being proved right about the potential tragedy of linking Social Security to the volatile stock market.

"I don't feel any righteous vindication about this. I have a very small 401k that's tanking. Everyone I know is having trouble getting loans. From a personal standpoint, this is awful, so there's no vindication in this," she said. "The privatization of Social Security would have tied it directly to the stock market and (Republican presidential nominee Sen. John) McCain supported it. If we had trusted the market with our most important assets, what would that have meant for us? It's a terrifying prospect.

Blust said the bus did not limit itself to grilling the Bush record, though.

"The idea of the tour is not just to focus on Bush but to focus on the politicians who have voted his policies a majority of the time, like Sen. (Thad) Cochran and Sen. Roger Wicker," Blust said. "We're here to remind them that it's a shared legacy. It's your legacy, too, Sens. Wicker and Cochran."

Congress Quarterly claims Cochran voted with the president 91 percent of the time, while Wicker voted with the president 95 percent of the time. Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama voted with the president 40 percent of the time.

Spokesmen with the Wicker and Cochran campaigns could not be reached for comment.