Bush Voices Pride, Humility and Optimism

President Bush and his wife, Laura, at the acceptance speech on Wednesday

As one of the costliest and b itterest campaigns came to an end today, President Bush basked in victory, reaching out to the supporters of his defeated rival, Senator John Kerry, and vowing to lead the United States toward new paths of greatness.

"I will do all I can do to deserve your trust," Mr. Bush said in an overture to Kerry supporters. "We have one country, one Constitution, and one future binds us."

Mr. Bush spoke at a thunderous celebration in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington barely an hour after Mr. Kerry delivered his concession speech, urging Democrats "to bridge the partisan divide" while remaining true to the ideals on which he campaigned

"Our fight goes on to put America back to work and to make our economy a great engine of job growth," Mr. Kerry told supporters in Boston, running through a host of issues that included affordable health care, the environment and equality.

And even as he called on his supporters to "bridge the partisan divide,'' he had a message for President Bush. "America is in need of unity and longing for a larger measure of compassion,'' he said. "I hope President Bush will advance those values in the coming years.''

Mr. Kerry and his running mate, Senator John Edwards, made appearances at Boston's historic Faneuil Hall about two hours after Mr. Kerry telephoned Mr. Bush at the White House to say he had decided not to challenge the results in Ohio, where a slim margin and thousands of uncounted provisional ballots could have become to this election what Florida's butterfly ballots and hanging chads were to the election of 2000.

"He said, 'Congratulations, Mr. President,' '' said Mr. Kerry's press secretary, Stephanie Cutter. She described the conversation as "courteous'' and said that Mr. Kerry had told the president it was time to "unify this country.'' Mr. Bush's presidential press secretary, Scott McClellan, characterized the call as "gracious."

At his victory celebration this afternoon, Mr. Bush - who stayed up until 5 a.m., checking the returns and conferring with aides - praised Mr. Kerry for waging a spirited campaign and for the graciousness of his private concession to him.

"America has spoken," Mr. Bush said. "I'm humbled by the confidence and trust of my fellow citizens."

Describing his second term as a wonderful opportunity, Mr. Bush said he was deeply proud "to lead such an amazing country, and proud to lead it forward."

The president reiterated the themes he had articulated throughout the long months of the campaign, and indeed for most of his first term: that America would defeat terrorism, nurture the seeds of democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq and reinvigorate its economy.

Mr. Bush, whose roots are in New England as well as Texas, also embraced the Lone Star State, where he was governor before becoming president. He said he loved the values of Texas: "sturdy, honest and as hopeful as the break of day."

Seeking to erase, at least for the moment, the deep differences between red states and blue states, Mr. Bush said, "When we come together, there is no limit to the greatness of America."

Mr. Kerry's decision not to challenge the Ohio balloting headed off a potential rerun of 2000, when ballot disputes left the election in limbo for more than than a month, until the United States Supreme Court effectively declared him the nation's 43rd president over Al Gore by halting further recounts in Florida.

Unlike 2000, Mr. Bush won the popular vote this time. With 98 percent of the national vote counted, Mr. Bush was leading Mr. Kerry by a margin of 51 percent to 48 percent. Over all, the president had a margin of victory of about 3.5 million votes, and was the first presidential candidate since his father, in 1988, to receive more than 50 percent of the popular vote.

Florida gave Mr. Bush solid support this time - he received 3,836,216 votes there, or 52 percent, to 3,459,293, or 47 percent - for Mr. Kerry. And the percentages from Ohio appeared to be similar. There, with 99 percent of the vote reported, Mr. Bush was ahead by a margin of 51 percent to 48.5 percent for Mr. Kerry; the president had an edge of about 130,000 votes.

Early today, after bitter court fights against Republican efforts to post election monitors in Ohio polling places - efforts the Democrats feared would intimidate minority voters and reduce turnout - Mr. Kerry's supporters homed in on the still-uncounted provisional ballots there. Ohio allows voters to cast such a ballot if election workers find some reason to question their eligibility.

Ohio officials said early today that they knew of 135,149 such ballots. But there could be more. Before Mr. Kerry conceded, a dozen counties had not totaled their provisional ballots. In past elections, about 10 percent of the provisional ballot total had come from those counties.

As strategists from both parties scrambled to review the fine points of Ohio's election laws, it became clear that not all provisional the ballots would represent legitimate votes. Provisional ballots can be challenged and discarded for having been filed in the wrong precinct, for example, or because the voter does not meet residency or citizenship requirements. Those decisions are made by a bipartisan board of elections, and 2-to-2 ties mean a ballot is invalidated.

For Mr. Kerry to have claimed Ohio, nearly all the provisional ballots would have had to have been accepted, and he would have had to win nearly all of them. And Mr. Kerry and his supporters would have had to go through the kind of long-running ballot challenges that he said on Tuesday he hoped to avoid.

Still, many Kerry supporters pinned their hopes on making sure that every ballot that could be counted, was. And while Mr. Kerry did not go before his supporters in Boston on Tuesday night, his running mate, Senator John Edwards, did, telling a crowd that was bleary-eyed and disappointed at the way things seemed to be going, "We will fight for every vote.''

The president's speechwriters had his valedictory ready, but he held off, not wanting to antagonize Democrats at a time when a second Bush administration was hoping to claim a mandate for its agenda. As the long wait turned into an all-nighter, some of the president's supporters dozed off in the sprawling Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington that the campaign had rented.

While the morning after Election Day began in uncertainty, with high-ranking Republicans appearing on television to say Mr. Kerry could not win the presidency, the early afternoon ended the suspense. Marc Racicot, who is chairman of the Bush re-election campaign, said on the CBS News program "The Early Show,'' hours before Mr. Kerry conceded defeat, that there was only "a mathematical impossibility of changing the vote in Ohio.''

"The truth of the matter is, the president won Ohio and won the election,'' he said.

The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, agreed.

"The president, many people felt, should just have gone ahead'' and declared victory, Mr. Frist said on the Fox News Channel. He said it was "graceful'' of the president to give Mr. Kerry time to concede, but Mr. Frist made clear that he saw only one way to add up the numbers. "It is apparent to everybody that he is the victor in Ohio, he has the Electoral College won and he has the highest number of popular votes in the history of the country,'' Mr. Frist said. "He's re-elected president of the United States.''

Barack Obama, who emerged as a rising star at the Democratic National Convention and who easily won a Senate seat from Illinois, said on CNN that it made sense for the Democrats to take time to decide whether to challenge the ballots in Ohio. On "Good Morning America'' on ABC, he touched on something that may become an issue between now and 2008 - the Democrats' very identity.

"The Republicans have been successful in framing themselves as the defender of American traditions, religious traditions, family traditions,'' Mr. Obama said, adding, "I think the Democrats have to make sure that we don't cede the field.''

Mr. Kerry ceded the election to Mr. Bush in what Mr. McClellan, the White House press secretary, said was a three- or four-minute conversation. Mr. Bush took Mr. Kerry's call at his desk in the Oval Office.

"I think you were an admirable, worthy opponent,'' Mr. Bush told Mr. Kerry. "You waged one tough campaign. I hope you are proud of the effort you put in - you should be.''

Mr. Bush exchanged hugs with the others people in the room, including Karl Rove, his political strategist; Karen Hughes, his longtime communications adviser, and Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. They were soon joined by Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff; Blake Gottesman, Mr. Bush's personal assistant; and other members of the president's inner circle.

Mr. McClellan said that Mr. Bush then went down the hall toward Vice President Dick Cheney's office. The two men met just outside Mr. Cheney's office, and Mr. Bush passed along the news of Senator Kerry's call, Mr. McClellan said. Mr. Bush then went back to the official residence to speak to his wife. Not long after, the 58-year-old president, a fitness enthusiast, worked out.

This election is only the second that Mr. Kerry has ever lost - he was defeated in 1972 when he ran for Congress. Unlike Mr. Gore in 2000, Mr. Kerry has a job to go back to, now that he has lost the presidency. His current Senate term runs through 2008.

His concession, coming long after the last of the polls had closed, kindled comparisons to 1960, when Richard M. Nixon conceded to John F. Kennedy in midmorning, or 1916, when Woodrow Wilson went to bed believing he had lost, only to discover that 4,000 votes from California had given him the lead over Charles Evans Hughes.

Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, said the victory had made Mr. Bush unique in American history. Mr. Bush is the only president who did not win a popular-vote plurality in his first term to win a second term: John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 and Benjamin Harrison in 1888 all lost their bids for re-election.

For his part, Mr. Kerry explained his thinking in deciding not to wait for a complete count in Ohio.

"In America,'' he said, "it is vital that every vote count and that every vote be counted, but the outcome should be decided by voters, not a protracted legal process. I would not give up this fight if there was a chance that we would prevail. But it is now clear that even when all the provisional ballots are counted, which they will be, there won't be enough outstanding votes for us to be able to win Ohio, and therefore we cannot win this election.''