As Texas Governor and would-be President in July of 2000, George W. Bush reaped a PR bonanza by going before the NAACP national convention in Baltimore, promising a new commitment to equality and upward mobility for all citizens. "Before we go to the future, we must acknowledge our past," he said. "For my party, there is no escaping the reality that the party of Lincoln has not always carried the mantle of Lincoln. Recognizing and confronting our history is important. Transcending our history is essential."

An editorial in the Austin American-Statement proclaimed, "Bush takes a risk and wins." The Baltimore Sun column of Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover declared, "Softer Bush spooks Democrats." On ABC's "Good Morning America," political analyst George Stephanopoulos said Bush had sent "a clear signal to the moderate majority he's targeting."

When the President returns Thursday for the group's 97th annual convention, called "Voting Our Values, Valuing Our Votes," undiluted accolades won't exactly be in the cards. Republicans say the President, with his "ownership society"  agenda, has made an unprecedented effort to reach a community where the return is always going to be low.

Back in 2002, he appeared in the East Room with Coretta Scott King and her family for the unveiling of a portrait of her late husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and promised that America "will honor his name forever." The elaborate event -- also attended by the First Lady, Laura Bush, who had flown in from Atlanta with Mrs. King -- looked like a milestone in the White House's effort to build long-term support among African Americans. Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman travels frequently to receptive black audiences, and took the extraordinary step of telling the NAACP convention in Milwaukee last year that it was "wrong" for the party, beginning with Richard M. Nixon in 1968, to employ a Southern strategy that relied on desegregation and busing as wedge issues.

But in 2004, the President's share of the black vote rose from an embarrassing 9 percent to a disappointing 11 percent. Bush's political advisers say he did better than that in places where they ran urban radio ads, increasing his share from 7 percent to 16 percent in Ohio and Pennsylvania and from 7 to 13 percent in Florida. Mehlman has said that he knew it would take a few election cycles to see the true impact of the party's outreach efforts, including recruitment of more black Republicans for local and statewide ballots. These advisers are especially optimistic about Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, running for Senator in Mehlman's native Maryland. "The storm Steele would need to achieve victory is brewing," said one Republican official.

Modern top-of-the-ticket African-American Republican success stories used to be limited to Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts, who in 1966 became the first African-American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction. Now, besides Steele, the party also has Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a meatpacker's son running for Governor, and Lynn Swann, the Pittsburgh Steelers veteran and ABC sportscaster running against Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.

Even so, the gains have been nothing like these advisers had dreamed back in Baltimore. Critics say administration rhetoric was never matched with action. "We knew he was in the oil business - we just didn't know it was snake oil," the NAACP's chairman, Julian Bond, said at the 2002 convention, in Houston. Bush agreed to speak this week to the NAACP, the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization, after rejecting invitations five years in a row. That had allowed the group to call him the first President since Herbert Hoover not to show up. In 2004, aides at first said Bush had a scheduling conflict, but later acknowledged that the real reason was inflammatory criticism by the group's leaders. Bond said at Auburn University in 2003 that the Republican Party's idea of equal rights "is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side."

So how can Bush at least break even, and maybe even score some points, with a skeptical to hostile audience and a press pack gearing up to write about his failure to connect with minorities?  Here's what to listen for:

--Republican officials say one of his central points will be the President's support for renewing expiring sections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which eliminated such impediments to voting as literacy tests, and tried to make sure more eligible Southern voters were able to go to the polls. The House approved the extensions last week and the Senate is now considering them. The President first called for the renewal in December, when he signed a bill calling for the placement of a statue of Rosa Parks in the Capitol's National Statuary Hall, and in April he called it "a very important part of the civil rights legislation."

--In New Orleans' Jackson Square two weeks after Hurricane Katrina's cruel landfall, the President acknowledged that the region's persistent poverty "has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America." He has said little since then about what he wants to do to change that, and the NAACP speech would be a chance to offer something specific and meaty that would walk the talk. People close to Bush said the New Orleans aftermath has been frustrating, showing the limits of the office, but maintain that Democrats did not exactly appear eager for a bipartisan dialogue on race and poverty, either.