President Bush hailed a slight decline in unemployment Friday as reason for his re-election, evidence the “economy is strong and getting stronger.” Not so, said Sen. John Kerry, countering that the administration’s term will end with a net loss of jobs.
“The president wants you to re-elect him. For what?” Kerry jabbed at the Republican in the White House. “Losing jobs? Building the biggest deficit in American history?”
Buoyed by a poll showing him surging into a double-digit lead, Bush campaigned across Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Iowa, three states he lost in 2000. Kerry worked Ohio, where Bush prevailed in the last election, as the two men began a nine-week fall campaign for the White House.
“There is a clear difference of philosophy in this race. He is for expanding government, I am for expanding opportunity,” Bush said in Moosic, Pa. It was his first appearance after Thursday night’s convention acceptance speech, in which the president pledged to defeat terrorists while helping Americans achieve economic security.
“With the right leadership, this young century will be a liberty century. It’ll be a century of freedom,” he said.
Kerry campaigned by bus in Ohio, the most fiercely contested state in this campaign, his rhetoric sharpened in response to days of Republican convention attacks.
The Massachusetts senator said Bush has a “record of failure,” and the GOP convention was designed to mask it with attacks on him and fellow Democrats.
“I will not have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and who misled America into Iraq,” he said.
Kerry received five military medals while serving in Vietnam. Bush served stateside in the National Guard while Vice President Dick Cheney’s five draft-era deferments kept him out of the service.
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