President Bush and Democratic rival Sen. John Kerry side-stepped controversy over each other’s Vietnam-era service on Thursday as they brought the emotional turmoil of the war on terrorism to battleground states that are key to their election hopes.
Campaigning in Iowa, where Vice President Dick Cheney warned this week that voting for Kerry would make the nation vulnerable to another terrorist attack, Kerry sharply rebuked the president for building a re-election campaign upon fear.
“George Bush refused to contradict that comment or walk away from it yesterday,” Kerry said in an interview with The Associated Press in Des Moines. “George Bush and Dick Cheney are engaging in irresponsible and outrageous behavior in trying to play the politics of fear.”
“Put Dick Cheney and me back in office,” said Bush, campaigning across Pennsylvania and greeting thousands awaiting him inside the War Memorial arena in Johnstown. “This country will be safer, stronger and better for every American.”
“We’re staying on the offensive,” said Bush, framing the war in Iraq as the front line in the war on terrorism.
Outside the arena, protesters held placards such as one reading “Bush lied, 1,000 died.”
Bush and Kerry tried to focus on health care and taxation; health care being a central promise of Kerry’s campaign and tax cuts key to Bush’s.
Kerry, avoiding the newest disclosures about Bush’s service record in the Texas Air National Guard, criticized the president for not addressing health-care costs during his term.
“President Bush has had four years to try to deal with this, and he has no plan for America to lower the health-care costs,” said Kerry, campaigning in closely divided Iowa, where he won his first victory in his bid for the Democratic nomination.
Bush wants to limit medical malpractice lawsuits to try to contain health-care costs. Kerry’s proposals for providing health care for most of the uninsured, along with the rest of the Democrat’s promises, will only result in a huge tax increase, Bush warned.
Kerry proposes to raise taxes for only the wealthiest people–those earning more than $200,000 a year. But Bush insists that means new taxes for nearly 1 million owners of small businesses who pay personal income taxes on business earnings–such as the owners of Byers’ Choice , a manufacturer of holiday crafts based in suburban Philadelphia, where the president stumped Thursday.
“If you drive a car, Sen. Kerry has voted for higher taxes on you,” Bush said. “If you have a job, he’s voted for higher taxes on you. If you’re married, or have children, he’s voted for higher taxes on you. … The good news is, on the 2nd of November, you have a chance to vote.
“America will reject the hidden Kerry tax plan,” the president said.
Vietnam on horizon
As much as both candidates attempted to avert questions of disputed Vietnam War-era records, the issue likely will resurface at a National Guard Association meeting in Las Vegas next week–Bush is to appear there Tuesday, Kerry on Sept. 16. Yet when a 91-year-old woman in Des Moines showed Kerry her dog tags Thursday and told him she served at a base in Missouri, Kerry took a moment to reminisce. “You never forget your service number, it’s ingrained in you,” he said.
From the audience, a man shouted, “George did!”
As the crowd laughed and applauded, Kerry demurred: “Well, moving on. . . . “
The White House this week released records showing that Bush failed to appear for a physical exam, as ordered, to maintain his fighter pilot’s rating in Texas in 1972. Instead, records show Bush was seeking transfer to Alabama, to work on a political campaign–a transfer Bush won before receiving an honorable discharge in August 1973.
On Thursday the son of an officer who signed memos about Bush’s National Guard Service, first obtained by CBS News, questioned the authenticity of one of them, The Associated Press reported. Gary Killian said he doubted his father, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who died in 1984, would have written that he felt pressured to “sugar coat” Bush’s performance review. “It just wouldn’t happen,” Gary Killian told AP.
Also, the memos looked as though they had been produced on a computer using Microsoft Word software, said Sandra Ramsey Lines, whom AP described as an independent document examiner.
CBS said Thursday it stood by its reporting.
For his part, Kerry has faced weeks of controversy surrounding his service as commander of a swift boat in combat in Vietnam in 1968-69. After 4 1/2 months of combat duty, Kerry earned a ticket home when he was awarded a third Purple Heart as well as Silver and Bronze Stars for valor. He also became a war protester.
The Kerry campaign Thursday was not addressing Bush’s records: “We’re not commenting on it,” spokesman David Wade said.
But the Bush campaign was forced to address records that were made public only Wednesday night–records showing Bush disobeyed a 1972 order to undergo a flight physical.
“These are the same old recycled attacks we see every time the president is up for election,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.
Kerry talks to Baptists
Religion also came into play as Kerry campaigned in New Orleans. Speaking to the National Baptist Convention, Kerry compared Bush’s “compassionate conservative” approach to the biblical tale of two men who come upon a robbed and beaten man.
“They felt compassion, but there were no needs. Then the Good Samaritan gave both his heart and his help,” he told the predominantly African-American group. “It is clear: For four years, George W. Bush may have talked about compassion, but he’s walked right by. He’s seen people in need, but he’s crossed over to the other side of the street.”
As they tour the nation, both candidates are appealing to voters in closely divided states such as Iowa and Pennsylvania.
Bush lost Pennsylvania to Al Gore by 5 percentage points in 2000, but the president has visited Pennsylvania more than 30 times since his election. The latest polls indicate the Keystone State is as closely divided as the onlookers who lined the route of Bush’s motorcade on County Line Road marking the border of suburban Bucks County.
Terror a topic on the trail
The war on terrorism is weighingmore heavily on the minds of some of the few thousand voters who turned out in this region of Pennsylvania.
“This friction and all this to-do with Bush’s record and Kerry’s record on the Vietnam issue,” said Betty Schieber, shaking her head. The grandmother of six who lives in Langhorne, a town in Bucks County, says: “On the Vietnam issue, what Kerry did over there, I don’t know. But, when he came back and said all those things before the congressional committee that made our soldiers look bad, that was wrong.”
Brad Landis, a purchasing agent in neighboring Montgomery County, says the war on terrorism matters more than old military records.
“The fact that George Bush has to lead this nation against the terrorists, he’s gonna do the best–regardless of whether he was in the National Guard,” he said.
