Kerry: U.S. Needs Hard Worker Who Can Multi-Task [Bush is in over his head]

Macon Daily ^ | October 19, 2004 | Reuters

[ejdrapes]

Kerry: U.S. Needs Hard Worker Who Can Multi-Task

DAYTON, Ohio (Reuters) - Democratic White House challenger John Kerry said the United States needed a leader who could do more than one thing at a time, and accused President Bush on Tuesday of mishandling both the economy and the war on terrorism.

On the attack with two weeks until the Nov. 2 election, the Massachusetts senator also rebuked Bush for talking tough about his efforts to catch or kill Osama bin Laden, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The al Qaeda leader is still at large.

Kerry suggested at a rally before thousands of supporters in Dayton that Bush was in over his head at the White House.

"Let me tell you what the real test of this race is," Kerry said. "We need a president of the United States who can do more than one thing at the same time."

"We need a president who understands that not only do we need to do the job of being the head of state and commander in chief, but we need a president who also understands what it means ... to get the job done for the middle class in America," he said.

Kerry mocked Bush for complaining over and over in their first debate that the presidency and establishing security in Iraq was "hard work."

"I kept hearing the president say in that debate, 'it's hard work, it's hard work, it's hard work,"' Kerry said. "Well, Mr. President, I'm very happy to relieve you of that hard work."

He called Bush's economic policy "deja vu all over again," comparing his record to that of Herbert Hoover, the last president to lose jobs on his White House watch, and accused Bush of "raiding and privatizing" the Social Security retirement system.

"He has become the first president in more than 70 years to have the incomes of American families decline in each year of his presidency," Kerry said in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. earlier.

"He has become the first president to turn a record surplus into the largest deficit in history and he has become the first president to launch an all-out assault on Social Security."

Pennsylvania and Ohio are two of the biggest battlegrounds in this year's election.

Kerry accused Bush of taking his eye off bin Laden and diverting from the war on terror to invade Iraq.

"Let me also make it clear, that compared to this president -- who made significant boasts about chasing after Osama bin Laden and then only months later said 'I don't know where he is, or I don't really care and I don't think about him that much' -- I will fight a tougher, smarter, more effective war on terror."

Kerry, who is running neck and neck with Bush in opinion polls, kept up his relentless battering of the president's economic policies and renewed his criticism that Bush would undo the federal government's "sacred compact" with seniors.

"If you work hard and contribute to your country, you can retire with a level of decency and dignity. Imagine if that was taken away?" he asked. "Social Security is on the ballot. A choice between one candidate who will save Social Security and another who will undermine it."

Democratic presidential candidates have long tried to paint Republicans as a threat to Social Security in an effort to win the votes of elderly Americans who can make the difference in critical battlegrounds like Florida.

Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said the president had not endorsed and specific plan, although one under consideration would allow younger workers to put some of their Social Security tax money into personal retirement accounts that could then be invested in the stock market.

"This opportunism confirms what the American people have already seen for themselves," Schmidt said. "John Kerry will say anything for political benefit. His scare tactics and grasping rhetoric on Social Security have shown that once again."

[Joe Miner]

Exactly. Kerry can't both campaign and show up to vote. He clearly is not a multiple-tasker.

OMG zinger! W should use this line today!

[mbennett203]

So they mean the president that fights in Iraq and manages to find Khalid Sheik Mohammed in Afghanniland is single-minded and can't multi-task? Morons.