Kerry's jabs at Bush grow more personal

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Senator John F. Kerry, whose attacks on President Bush this week have becoming increasingly personal in tone, told voters yesterday that the Iraq occupation was faltering because of Bush's own ''pride" and that the president was afraid to ''look the people in the eye who have lost their job."

At a town hall meeting in Toledo, Kerry spoke dismissively of the president, saying Bush had been ''selected" to hold office by the Supreme Court and had broken with most US presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, who had worked with other nations and alliances on global concerns. And Kerry nodded as one audience member, 74-year-old Dorothy Sahadi, accused Vice President Dick Cheney of engineering an ''invasion" of Iraq to benefit Halliburton, the energy giant he once headed, then said of Cheney and Iraqis: ''How many has he murdered? He has murdered women, children, babies for nothing, just for the money in his pocket."

Kerry said he disagreed with some parts of Sahadi's remarks. ''But I know exactly where you're coming from," the Massachusetts senator said, in remarks that were broadcast live on local television in this election-year battleground state. ''I know where that anger comes from, I know where the frustration comes from." Kerry spokesman David Wade said afterwards that Kerry disagreed with Sahadi's ''murdered" comment.

Kerry's remarks in Toledo, followed by his dissection of Bush's jobs record and his own economic plan at Washtenaw Community College in Michigan, reflected a new, ''fired-up" spirit in the presumed Democratic nominee, one senior adviser to Kerry said yesterday. After Kerry faced questions Monday about whether he threw away his Vietnam War medals at a 1971 antiwar protest, his frustration at what he saw as a Republican-led smear effort turned to anger and then bullishness in assailing Bush and Cheney in personal terms over their lack of service in Vietnam, according to the adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Leaders of the Bush campaign and the Republican National Committee have expressed a measure of glee over Kerry's attacks, predicting he will turn off swing voters by attacking Bush personally and drawing media attention to his Vietnam record and not his views about jobs, health care, and foreign policy.

Kerry has defended himself by telling voters at every campaign stop that Republicans have spent $70 million on attack ads this year to distort his Vietnam-era experiences as a Navy lieutenant, his activities as a leader of antiwar protests, and his 19-year record of votes in the US Senate.

To 300 workers, senior citizens, veterans, and others at a union hall in Toledo yesterday, Kerry said, ''$70 million in attack ads in April by a sitting president of the United States -- sounds like desperation to me, ladies and gentlemen."

Appealing to out-of-work Ohioans, who he said have lost some 170,000 manufacturing jobs under Bush, Kerry drew a link between jobs leaving the United States and administration foreign policy.

''A lot of countries are angry at us or they look at us and think there's too much baggage in working with us," Kerry said.

The time has come for a humbler US posture on Iraq, Kerry contended. Of Bush, he said, ''take your pride and put it away and go talk to these other countries and acknowledge that this is more complicated than we thought." Later, in Michigan, Kerry told a local television reporter that he was not insisting the UN or NATO take over the reconstruction of Iraq, suggesting that an ''ad hoc" group could also manage nonmilitary affairs.

In Toledo, Kerry argued that Bush has not developed backup assistance for the unemployed. ''At least come out and look the people in the eye who have lost their job and say we're going to give you the job training, we're going to give you the health care," Kerry said.

Republicans yesterday portrayed Kerry as a candidate on the defensive over his own military and national security record. ''His negativity and his constant politicization of the war on terror is being rejected by Americans across the country," said Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt. ''He makes these highly negative comments that are in a similar vein to when [he] called Republicans liars and crooks, and when he called for regime change in the United States."

Also yesterday, former Vice President Al Gore announced that he would donate $4 million to the Democratic National Committee, and $1 million apiece to the committees that support House and Senate Democratic candidates, from his 2000 campaign accounts.

Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com.