Kerry campaign shifts gear into attack modeCandidate seen setting agenda as debates nearWEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- The perception of a Democratic presidential campaign in disarray remained so widespread Wednesday morning that Senator John F. Kerry got unsolicited advice from a woman attending a town hall meeting on Social Security: Beef up your rapid-response team, the retired lawyer suggested.
The remark prompted laughter, including from the candidate himself. But the Kerry campaign was already undergoing a transformation. Between a speech Monday in New York that gave a point-by-point accounting of continued problems in Iraq, and a speech Friday in Philadelphia that accused President Bush of taking his eye off the real terrorist threat, Osama bin Laden, the Kerry campaign seized control of the political dialogue during a week that was supposed to have been dominated by the incumbent as he visited the United Nations and invited Iraq's prime minister to the White House. Through speeches and two news conferences, Kerry attacked Bush for having created a costly diversion in the war on terror by invading Iraq. His ad-makers pumped out television commercials overnight that used footage from the day before to criticize the president's policies and statements. And the new message team of John Sasso, Michael McCurry, and Joe Lockhart helped manage events in a way they believe will put Kerry in a strong position heading into the first presidential debate Thursday night. For the first time since August, when the Republican National Convention and criticism of Kerry's military record swamped the campaign, Kerry and his team were setting the agenda rather than responding to attacks. A half-dozen polls released last week indicated Bush's postconvention lead over Kerry narrowing. ''Look at the president's news conference today," a senior Kerry adviser, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said Thursday. ''Every question he was asked about was about issues we raised. That's how you know you had a good week." It was a change that Democratic advocates had long awaited. ''John Kerry turned his boat into the ambush of Iraq today," Mark Green, the Democrats' mayoral candidate in New York in 2001, said after Monday's speech at New York University, evoking the image of Kerry steering his Vietnam War swift boat into enemy gunfire. ''History's verdict is in on this war, but the public hasn't heard that because of all the static and noise from the Republicans." Bush responded by accusing Kerry of adopting a new position on Iraq, that of an antiwar candidate. He told audiences that his opponent ''would prefer the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to the situation in Iraq today." (Kerry had said in his NYU speech, ''We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.") The president blasted Kerry for accusing him and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi of Iraq of offering an overly optimistic assessment of the current conditions in Iraq. And his campaign produced a tart new ad showing Kerry windsurfing and accusing him of tacking both ways on a host of issues. Continued... |
