When President Bush arrives in Tucson tonight, he'll be the first sitting president in more than half a century to stay the night in the Old Pueblo or its immediate environs.
While the White House is releasing little information about Bush's whereabouts during his planned 13-hour stay, the president will rest his head somewhere in the Tucson area tonight. And that's a rare thing in this town.
He's slated to hold an early-morning private fundraiser Friday for Republican congressional candidate Tim Bee at a Catalina Foothills home. The event, weeks in the planning, has focused renewed interest on Bee's bid against Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
Air Force One is expected to touch down at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base tonight. And by late Friday morning, the president will have left Tucson.
The purely political stop marks Bush's fourth trip to the area while in office, more times than any other sitting president has visited Tucson. But public perception of the president has changed a great deal since his first visit in 2003.
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Back then — when the president was taken by helicopter to Mount Lemmon to see damage from that year's devastating forest fire — his national approval rating was at 60 percent.
Less than two years later, after being re-elected, he was back — this time to talk Social Security at the Tucson Convention Center. His approval rating hovered around 50 percent.
But by the time he returned late that year for a brief visit to Davis-Monthan, Hurricane Katrina had hit, the government's response was under scrutiny, and approval of Bush had sunk to 35 percent in polls.
Today, 28 percent of Americans approve of his job performance, and that has opened the door for criticism from Democrats who link Bee with Bush.
Bee, president of the state Senate, hasn't said whether he approves of the president's job performance. Democrats have challenged Bee to highlight areas in which he disagrees with Bush, as he has said he does.
That's a topic that Bee campaign spokesman Tom Dunn said Wednesday would be "open for discussion after the event."
"We're excited about it," Dunn said of the visit. "It's not every day you have a chance to see the leader of the Free World."
Bee has met Bush before, albeit briefly. Most recently, Bee greeted the president when he arrived in Phoenix in May for a John McCain fundraiser.
As Bee spends today preparing for the visit, Democrats will prepare for protests. A "sign-making party" tonight will get things started.
"We want to communicate that we don't want more of the same," said Emily DeRose, Arizona Democratic Party spokeswoman. But amid the political squawking, some history is being made by the visit.
With Bush spending the night, his brief visit will mark the first time since 1957 that a sitting president has done so. The last one, Dwight D. Eisenhower, spent the night in barracks at Davis-Monthan.
The three presidents who have visited since — Bush, Bill Clinton and Gerald Ford — have all made brief forays, swinging in and out.
However, at least one other president did sleep in Tucson. In September of 1948, Harry S. Truman's green Pullman coach pulled into town at about 2 a.m.
A small crowd greeted his arrival, chanting "We want Harry" and "Speech, speech," but Truman was out for the night. And after an hour, he was on to New Mexico.
After Eisenhower's visit in 1957, it was almost 18 years before another sitting president even rolled into town: Ford, in October 1974.
It would be nearly 25 years before Clinton's visit in 1999.
