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Posted on 09/01/2004 5:09:06 PM PDT by ambrose
Bush surge prompts Kerry to kick-start campaign
By SCOTT SHEPARD Cox News Service
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
NEW YORK — Facing falling poll numbers and a surging rival in President Bush, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry is kick-starting his White House bid with new ads and advisers, a harsher criticism of the war in Iraq and a personal message to reporters covering the GOP convention that all is well with his campaign.
Kerry has taken the unusual step of dispatching campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill, senior strategist Tad Devine and pollster Mark Mellman to New York to breakfast with political reporters Thursday, just hours before Bush delivers a nationally televised speech accepting his party's nomination for another four-year term.
The Cahill-led mission is to quell speculation that a major staff shake-up could be in the offing — much like the one that resulted in Cahill taking charge of an under-performing Kerry campaign last fall — and that the Kerry organization is troubled by the Democratic nominee's slipping poll numbers.
Kerry's campaign offered little explanation for the venture into New York, which, with the Republican Party holding its national convention here, had a hush-hush, behind-enemy-lines quality to it.
But word of the mission coincided with the announcement of a $45 million advertising buy the Kerry campaign will make in 20 presidential battleground states after Labor Day.
It also coincided with a new intensity in Kerry's critique of Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq, evident in the candidate's speech Wednesday in Nashville to the national convention of the American Legion, the nation's largest organization of veterans.
"Today, terrorists have secured havens in Iraq that were not there before, and we have been forced to reach accommodation with those who have repeatedly attacked our troops," Kerry said. "Violence has spread in Iraq, Iran has expanded its influence, and extremism has gained momentum."
"Our differences could not be plainer, and I have set them out consistently," Kerry added. "When it comes to Iraq, it's not that I would have done one thing differently, I would have done everything differently."
Bush and Kerry have aggressively courted America's 26 million veterans, seen as a key political constituency because a high percentage of them vote.
Kerry won some of his biggest applause Wednesday when he outlined ways he would help veterans with domestic issues — health care, education benefits and jobs — they face after their military service is over.
"When I am president, you will have a fellow veteran in the White House who understands that those who fought for our country abroad should never have to fight for what they were promised back here at home," he said.
In New York, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe told reporters that "there will be no major shake-up (in the Kerry campaign), let me be crystal here." The campaign is merely going through a natural evolution in preparation for the general election contest with Bush, he said.
"If you look at the electoral college, if the election were held today, we would win," McAuliffe said. "I'm very comfortable where we are today. We haven't closed the sale yet, but ... Friday, the general election begins."
That campaign begins with public opinion polls showing the Bush-Kerry campaign in a virtual tie, the Democratic nominee's small lead having evaporated over the last three weeks amid unsubstantiated charges that Kerry lied about his combat heroism as a Swift Boat skipper in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam.
The Kerry campaign is beefing up with several new staff members, including Joe Lockhart and Joel Johnson, both hardened veterans of Bill Clinton's embattled White House. Lockhart will be a senior adviser to Kerry and Johnson will head the team charged with rapidly responding to Bush attacks.
The addition of Lockhart and Johnson underscores the concerns some Democrats have expressed about the slowness with which the campaign responded to the attacks on Kerry's combat record in Vietnam by a group of Republican-financed veterans calling themselves Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, who earned the Medal of Honor for combat in Vietnam, said Wednesday that the Democratic nominee should be forgiven by fellow Democrats for not recognizing "a new phenomenon" in presidential politics — a relatively small advertising buy, $500,000, raising charges that generate free news coverage worth millions of dollars as the facts are discerned.
"He's been through this (campaign attacks) before, though, and he's got the stuff it takes," Kerrey said of his fellow Democrat and onetime Senate colleague.
But it fell to Kerrey and another Vietnam veteran, former Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia, to lead the charge Wednesday in demanding the resignation of Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, after comments by Rove critical of the Democratic nominee's anti-war protests.
Rove, during a 30-minute interview with reporters and editors of the Associated Press, charged that Kerry had tarnished "the records and service" of fellow Vietnam veterans with his anti-war protests following his return from combat in Vietnam with three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star.
Kerry, in testimony to Congress in 1971 on behalf of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, detailed atrocities he said were committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam, including rapes, beheadings and random killings of civilians.
At the time, he said he was referring to incidents witnessed and described publicly by others, and has since said he regrets some of the language he used.
But his critics have portrayed that testimony as Rove did Wednesday with the AP, as an indictment of all Vietnam veterans, a dishonor to all of the 2.7 million Americans who served in Vietnam.
"It was a period of intense feeling on both sides for and against the war, but I think that was painting with far too broad a brush to tarnish the records and service of people who were defending our country and fighting communism and doing what they thought was right," Rove told the AP.
Rove said Bush's rival "served with valor" in Vietnam, and he denied any connection with a GOP-leaning special interest group that has made unsubstantiated claims that Kerry exaggerated his combat record.
But Kerry's surrogates charged that Rove is in league with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose ads were echoed in Rove's comments Wednesday. And they demanded that he resign, likening him to two other Bush advisers who have resigned from the campaign for ties to the Swift Boat group.
"If the question is whether or not there is any independence left between the campaign and these swift boat ads, that question has now been answered," Kerrey said during a conference call with reporters. "Karl Rove has been in enough political campaigns to understand how separate you need to be from these independent efforts and he just ended that separation. If (former Bush-Cheney general counsel Ben) Ginsberg resigned, so should he."
Cleland, who lost three limbs as an Army infantry officer in Vietnam, charged that Rove "is trying to stir the same pot" he did in trying to defeat other politicians who served in Vietnam: Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former Republican Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire and himself.
"Karl Rove was behind it all, it's part of his smear campaign to tarnish the records and service of Vietnam veterans, and now he's doing it again," Cleland said.
Retired Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak, a Kerry backer and part of the Democratic Party's rapid response team in New York, reacted angrily to Rove's comments.
"Who in the hell is Karl Rove talking about John Kerry's war record?" McPeak said. "A lot of Vietnam veterans are with John Kerry."
Kerrey and Cleland both pointed out that Rove applied for and received a deferment from military service during Vietnam so that he could attend college.
According to the Bush campaign, Rove drew the number 69 in the draft lottery when he graduated from high school in 1969 and received a student deferment upon enrolling at the University of Utah that fall. In the fall of 1971, after transferring to the University of Maryland, he was notified by his draft board in Salt Lake City that his student deferment had been revoked. Rove then was put into the extended priority status in 1972, but was not called to duty.
By that time, Kerrey noted, "it wasn't a question of whether the war was going to end but when ... and Kerry's anti-war activities were an attempt to end sooner than later." So, Cleland added, "in a way, his efforts were on behalf of Rove," so Rove would not have to serve in a war that the American public no longer supported.
Just remember that Cleland was not injured in combat. He was delivering beer to a party and mishandled ordnance that went off accidentally, blowing off his limbs. He's no hero. If his accident had occurred stateside, he would never have been a senator and he'd be off Kerry's payroll now.
Kick him while he's down!
How can kick-starting help when the wheels have fallen off?
Yes, but Kerry injured himself twice and got two of his Purple Hearts as a result. Max could have had a Purple Heart if he'd been as good of a liar as Kerry. On another topic, Kerry is cracking up. And I'm very currious to find out if the earlier posts here are correct that there is film of him burning a village in Vietnam.
The MSM is loving this. Now they have become the power behind JFK. At last its out in the open. But, what worries me the most is what are they going to do when JFK loses?
I also liked how the otherK spun the Swiftees impact. Ignores the fact that the Rats picked a flawed candidate.
Nah, Kerry's got it all wrong. He needs to do some more windsurfing, baseball, and bike riding. And while he's at it he can cuss out his Secret Service detail some more.
is this true? I know nothing about the man.
Karl Rove scares the sh*t out these people, doesn't he? Gotta love it.
I would not go so far as to say that Cleland was not a hero. All combat soldiers are heroes. But when he blew himself up he was not engaged in any heroic acts. Thus the incident leading to his injury was no heroic. Indeed, by his carelessness he endangered many of his fellow troops.
Karl Rove makes for a useful foil, doesn't he?
The F now stands for Flopsweat.
Is he hooking wires up to his genitals and turning on the electricity?
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Cleland is delusional.
John Kerry "tarnished the records and service of Vietnam veterans" MORE than Karl Rove could even if he tried.
Kerry's one of the reasons Vietnam Vets were spit on when they came home.
Is he ravaging the countryside in a manner reminiscent of Jenjhiss Khan?
Mitch McConnell looks like a puppet
Rove said Bush's rival "served with valor" in Vietnam"
Resign over this? He was pratically licking Kerry's browneye! What a thin-skinned douchebag!
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