DOWNINGTOWN, Pa. – A camouflage-clad Sen. John Kerry went goose hunting Thursday, while President Bush paid a call on the archbishop of a heavily Catholic battleground state, a clash of symbolism in a tight race for the White House.
Unimpressed with Kerry’s shotgun-toting excursion, Vice President Dick Cheney accused Kerry of donning an “October disguise” to keep his record on gun issues hidden from the voters.
Kerry’s hunting excursion in Boardman, Ohio, was a classic of a campaign genre, the photo-op. So, too, Bush’s stop at St. John’s Church Rectory in Downington, Pa., where he met with Cardinal Justin Rigali, Catholic archbishop of Philadelphia.
Images counted for much, words less.
Kerry said he had bagged a goose, but by the account of his own aide, that wasn’t the point. It’s important that voters “get a better sense of John Kerry, the guy,” Mike McCurry said of the 60-year-old Massachusetts senator.
Reporters never got a glimpse of Bush’s meeting with the spiritual leader of Catholics in a state where 23 percent of voters practice the faith. But photographers were briefly permitted inside the 20-minute meeting between the two men, good enough to record the image the president’s re-election campaign wanted.
“They had a good discussion about shared priorities,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters after the meeting.
It was Bush’s 40th trip to Pennsylvania of his term in office, underscoring the extraordinary effort he has made to turn a 2000 statewide defeat into a 2004 victory.
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