NEW YORK – President Bush picked apart Sen. John Kerry’s record on the Iraq war and tax cuts Thursday night, and summoned the nation toward victory over terrorism and economic security at home.
“Nothing will hold us back,” he said in a Republican National Convention acceptance speech that launched his re-election campaign.
“We are staying on the offensive – striking terrorists abroad – so we do not have to face them here at home,” Bush said in a prime-time address not far from ground zero of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“And we will prevail.”
“Four more years, four more years!” the delegates chanted as Bush strode alone onto a podium in the middle of the heavily fortified convention hall. His introduction was a video that stirred memories of Sept. 11 and credited him with “the heart of a president.”
“I believe this nation wants steady, consistent, principled leadership, and that is why, with your help, we will win this election,” he said.
First lady Laura Bush joined her husband onstage as he finished his speech, followed by Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife. On cue, thousands of red, white and blue balloons floated down from the ceiling, mixing with confetti and colored streamers in a made-for-television spectacle.
Bush’s speech marked the beginning of a two-month campaign sprint to Election Day, and Kerry clearly couldn’t wait. In a ferocious counterattack after a week of GOP convention-week criticism, he called the wartime commander in chief and Vice President Dick Cheney unfit to lead the nation.
“I’m not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who have refused to serve when they could have, and by those who have misled the nation into Iraq,” he said in remarks prepared for a midnight campaign appearance in Ohio.
Kerry won five military medals in the Vietnam War; Bush was in the National Guard, and Cheney’s five draft-era deferments kept him out of the service.
The Bush-Cheney campaign readied a new general election advertising campaign to build on elements in his convention speech. In the commercials, Bush vows to “spread ownership and opportunity,” “make our economy more job friendly” and help lower health care costs.
Locked in a tight race, the president underscored his differences with Kerry on issues of war, tax cuts and values. At the same time, he used terms less incendiary than those wielded by Cheney or Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., from the convention podium Wednesday night.
Bush said Kerry and Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards had both voted against $87 billion in aid for “troops doing battle in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
“When asked to explain his vote, the senator (Kerry) said, ‘I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.’ Then he said he was “proud of that vote.”
The president said Kerry has proposed “more than $2 trillion in new federal spending so far, and that’s a lot, even for a senator from Massachusetts.”
Bush added: “To pay for that spending, he is running on a platform of increasing taxes – and that’s the kind of a promise a politician usually keeps.”
Contrary to Bush’s characterization, Kerry’s economic plan calls for rolling back the Bush-era tax cuts only for the top 2 percent of wage earners, while leaving the rest in effect.
By all accounts, Bush is safely ahead in customary GOP strongholds across the South and Great Plains states, with Kerry similarly ahead in Democratic base states including New York, Illinois and California. That leaves about 20 states to contest.
Bush mentioned cultural issues where he and Kerry differ – abortion rights and a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage among them – and legislation that the senator opposed and Democratic President Clinton signed to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
In a return to the rhetoric of “compassionate conservatism” that marked his 2000 election campaign, Bush pledged changes in health coverage and pensions, among other things. He renewed his call for an overhaul of Social Security that would allow individuals to invest some of their payroll taxes on their own.
He also said he would double the number of individuals eligible for the government’s main job-training program, and create “American opportunity zones” that offer tax relief and other incentives to new businesses.
Polls show Bush receives high marks from voters for his leadership and the job he has done fighting the war on terror, although his handling of the war in Iraq and the economy is more problematic.
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