MILWAUKEE – President Bush and Sen. John Kerry reached for the finish line Monday, each claiming to be the strong, steady leader needed in a time of terrorism.
“This election comes down to who do you trust,” Bush said as Air Force One carried him to a half-dozen states on a final full day of campaigning.
“The world is watching,” the Democratic challenger said.
By election eve, millions of Americans had voted early in 32 states, including more than 1.8 million in Florida alone. Both campaigns primed Election Day turnout programs in battleground states from New Hampshire to Nevada.
Democrats, claiming Republicans sought to discourage minority voters, won a pair of court rulings Monday in Ohio that barred party representatives from challenging voters at their polling places. GOP lawyers quickly appealed, hoping for a reversal before polls opened today.
The nation’s terror alert – a constant reminder of the attacks of 2001 – remained at yellow for most of the country, despite the emergence late last week of a videotape of Osama bin Laden taunting Bush and Kerry.
After nearly eight months of head-to-head campaigning between the president and the Massachusetts senator, the final pre-election polls turned up tied – 49-49 in one CNN-USA Today-Gallup survey, with Ralph Nader at 1 percent. Tight surveys in Florida as well as Ohio and other Midwestern states added to the uncertainty of the competition for 270 electoral votes.
Bush campaigned across five states before heading home to vote on Election Day. At one point, the two men and their entourages nearly crossed paths, the president preparing to leave Milwaukee aboard Air Force One in early afternoon as Kerry’s chartered jet was arriving.
“There have been some tough times in Ohio,” Bush conceded as he began his day in a state that has lost 232,000 jobs since he took office. But “we are moving in the right direction,” he said, noting that the state has 5,500 new jobs since last month.
“The American president must lead with clarity and purpose. As presidents from Lincoln to Roosevelt to Reagan so clearly demonstrated, a president must not shift with the wind,” Bush said. “A president has to make the tough decisions and stand by them.”
Vice President Dick Cheney was far more pointed. “The clearest, most important difference in this campaign is simple to state: President Bush understands the war on terror and has a strategy for winning it. John Kerry does not,” he said in Hawaii.
Kerry’s running mate, Sen. John Edwards, was in Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio and Florida, forecasting victory for the Democrats at every opportunity. “Tomorrow, hope will arrive,” he said in Iowa, the state where precinct caucuses provided the first returns in the race for the White House more than nine months ago.
Kerry made six stops in four states Monday – two each in Ohio and Wisconsin – pledging to be an advocate for the middle class and those struggling to join it. “I’ve heard your struggles. I share your hopes. And together, tomorrow we have a chance to make a difference,” he said, casting Bush as a friend of the rich and powerful.
In Florida, Kerry said he stood ready to assume national command in a time of terrorism. “I believe we can bring the world back to the side of America. I believe that we can regain America’s respect and influence in the world, and I believe we deserve a president who knows how to fight a more effective war on terror and make America safe,” he said.
In Milwaukee several hours later, he pledged a “fresh start to Iraq.”
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