Cheney assumes familiar role

FULTON, Mo.-- After spending $50 million in a single month and airing a raft of negative political ads against John F. Kerry, Bush campaign advisers returned to a familiar weapon yesterday: Vice President Dick Cheney, who launched a new round of coordinated attacks on the senator's national security record.

Cheney delivered his remarks in typically understated style, reading in a monotone voice from a prepared text. Only a few of his accusations were new -- that, for example, Kerry had voted in 1984 against certain weapons systems, a message mirrored in a blitz of Bush campaign ads unveiled in 18 battleground states yesterday.

But Cheney's speech dominated the political debate -- spurring Democrats to respond even before he spoke -- and starkly contrasted the decidedly less partisan talk President Bush gave in Minnesota about broadband taxation and hydrogen cell technology.

''Beyond his struggle to maintain a position on Iraq, Senator Kerry's record raises serious doubts about his understanding of the broader struggle against terror, of which Iraq is only one front," Cheney told the audience at Westminster College. He said the Massachusetts senator has ''yet to outline any serious plan for winning the war on terror," accused him of ''inconsistencies and changing rationales," and said he has ''given us ample grounds to doubt the judgment and attitude he brings to bear on vital issues of national security."

The speech was met with widespread applause, but afterward, Westminster College's president, Fletcher M. Lamkin, sent out an e-mail to the college community expressing his displeasure with the tone. He said he had no advance warning about the tenor of the speech.

''Frankly, I must admit that I was surprised and disappointed that Mr. Cheney chose to step off the high ground and resort to Kerry-bashing for a large portion of his speech," the e-mail read. ''We had only been told the speech would be about foreign policy, including issues in Iraq."

An announcement on the school website about Cheney's visit quotes Lamkin as saying the vice president's office called unsolicited a few days beforehand to offer the speech.

Democrats, outraged, pointed to numerous times when Cheney had proposed cutting defense spending, including comments by then-Representative Cheney in 1984 that President Reagan should cut defense spending because the deficit had grown so large. ''Dick Cheney took audacity to a new level today by going after John Kerry for positions that Dick Cheney himself has taken," Phil Singer, a Kerry spokesman, said. ''The vice president's shameful remarks about a war hero like John who risked his life trying to save the lives of others make it clear that the Bush campaign has no problem stomping the truth."

Before Cheney spoke, the Democratic National Committee chairman, Terry McAuliffe, held his own event, demanding that Cheney ''call off the Republican attack dogs" and dubbing the vice president the ''attack dog in chief."

Bush campaign officials seemed untroubled by the swift Democratic response; their goals were to put Democrats on the defensive and to be talking about national security, an issue they believe breaks in the president's favor. Cheney has often been ushered onto the public stage when the administration has hit a rough spot and wants to deflect attention away from Bush -- as is likely to happen this week when Cheney and Bush meet with the Sept. 11 intelligence panel and Bush faces the anniversary of his May 1 ''Mission Accomplished" speech about the end of major combat operations in Iraq.

By that measure, the day was a success, as Bush remained almost invisible.

At the same time, Cheney's appearance underscored a personnel gap in the Kerry operation, though a temporary one: a high-profile player who can stand in as the vice president does when ugly campaigning gets worse. Although Kerry does have key surrogates, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and former governor Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, his advisers have talked about filling his vice presidential running mate position earlier than usual in order to gain a backup.

At the heart of the debate yesterday was the argument about which presidential team would best handle national security, based on their past voting records and public statements.

Cheney read several quotes from Kerry that seemed to contradict one another and listed several weapons programs, from the MX Missile to the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, that he said Kerry had voted against. He challenged Kerry's belief that combating terrorism is as much an intelligence and law enforcement project as it is a military one. He had especially harsh words for Kerry's criticism of the size of the international coalition in Iraq, which Kerry has said he would increase if he were president.

''I am aware of no other instance in which a presumptive nominee for president of the United States has spoken with such disdain of active fighting allies of the United States in a time of war," Cheney said.

''Senator Kerry's contempt for our good allies is ungrateful to nations that have withstood danger, hardship, and insult for standing with America in the cause of freedom."

But Cheney also made light of Kerry's approach to international diplomacy -- especially his effort to clarify a contention that unnamed foreign leaders quietly hoped that Bush would lose.

''The other day on 'Meet the Press,' he told Tim Russert, quote, 'I mean, you can go to New York City and you can be in a restaurant and you can meet a foreign leader,' " Cheney said, drawing chortles from the audience.

''Maybe next time he'll narrow it down for us a little more. Maybe the name of the restaurant? Maybe the leader?"