Ken Mehlman

Ken Mehlman, manager of the Bush-Cheney campaign, was Tuesday's guest. Here are excerpts from his remarks:

"One, we are going to know who won [on] election night. Two, that person will be George W. Bush. Third, he will win the popular vote and the electoral vote."

"The most important thing you can do in politics is give someone a personal contact from a credible source.... We used '02 and '03 to build a mass grass-roots organization around the lessons we learned [in the 2000 election.] This year, we focused on a program that can best be summed up as a multilevel marketing program - a large grass-roots [effort] that would reinforce our message, a focused voter- registration effort on high- growth areas. [It's] an effort that has produced 3.4 million new voters."

"This past spring when we had lots of bad news in the world was a very challenging time for us - whether it was the Abu Ghraib [prison] stuff or the other stuff... I think it is a testament to the president's leadership and strength that ... we maintained a level of support that was strong notwithstanding the fact there was a lot of bad news out there."

"I think it reinforces a pattern the public has seen. John Kerry views our men and women in the military as a political pawn for him to make short-term gains."