Bush, Kerry Take Offensive in Campaigns

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – President Bush and Sen. John Kerry stayed on the offensive in swing states Sunday as the presidential race entered its final full week. In a television interview, Bush said it is “up in the air” whether the nation can ever be fully safe from another terror attack and suggested terrorists may still be contemplating ways to disrupt the election.

For the fourth consecutive Sunday, Kerry spoke at a predominantly black church, this one in Fort Lauderdale in heavily Democratic Broward County, and promised worshippers their votes would be counted this time. The county saw some of the worst of Florida’s 2000 vote-counting abuses. “I want you to turn out,” the Democrat said.

With polls showing the race still tight, the campaigns were focusing their efforts on fewer than a dozen states that remain highly competitive, with both camps making last-minute scheduling decisions to reflect realities on the ground.

The Massachusetts senator was headed to New Hampshire after campaign stops in Florida. Bush won both states in 2000. The Republican incumbent was campaigning in New Mexico, which Democrat Al Gore narrowly won in 2000.

In a taped interview with Fox News Channel, Bush was asked whether the nation would always be vulnerable to another terror attack and whether Americans would always have to live with that.

“Yes, because we have to be right 100 percent of the time in disrupting any plot and they have to be right once,” Bush said. He said the nation is safer from terrorism, but “whether or not we can be ever fully safe is up – you know, up in the air.”

Bush said he was sure terrorists still “think about” trying to disrupt the Nov. 2 elections, citing the March 11 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people right before Spain’s national elections.

“I don’t want to alarm anybody because … there’s nothing specific at this point in time – a kind of general intent,” Bush said in the interview, to be broadcast Monday night.

Bush caused a flap at the G0P convention in New York in late August when he said of the war on terror: “I don’t think you can win it.” The comment, made in an interview with NBC, complicated GOP efforts to portray him as a resolute leader.

The president quickly backed away from the earlier remark, asserting that the war on terror could be won, even if not in a conventional sense, and that he “probably needed to be more articulate.”

In the Fox News Channel interview taped Saturday in Florida, Bush also was asked whether a nuclear, chemical or biological attack in the United States is a real possibility. “Yes it is,” Bush replied. “That’s the biggest threat we face.”

Closing its $150 million ad campaign, Kerry’s camp announced a series of television commercials with the candidate offering messages both hopeful about the future and sharply critical of Bush.

“I believe our future belongs to freedom not to fear,” Kerry says in one. In another, he accuses Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney of “misleading Americans about what I said.”

Kerry’s campaign said the ads make up a large chunk of the $10 million it will spend over the next week on advertising in 14 states. More than half of that is devoted to just three – Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, top priorities for both campaigns. Bush won Florida and Ohio in 2000, and lost Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, former President Clinton’s plans to campaign for Kerry in Philadelphia on Monday and Florida the next day – his first public appearances since heart bypass surgery in early September – drew attention from both camps, with Democrats claiming he could be a big help with swing voters and Republicans scoffing at the notion.

“President Clinton has enormous standing with the base of the Democratic Party,” Kerry adviser Tad Devine told “Fox News Sunday.”

But White House communications director Dan Bartlett, interviewed on the same program, said that while he wished Clinton well, “the fact that John Kerry’s going to have to roll him off the surgery table and onto the campaign trail demonstrates a revealing aspect, that he’s underperforming in key parts of his own constituency.”

Polls showed little movement, with the race essentially even nationally and in the major swing states. New polls showed an even race in Arkansas, Florida and Nevada, with Kerry up slightly in New Hampshire, New Jersey and Maine.

Kerry strategists, meanwhile, canceled plans to visit Colorado this week, suggesting his campaign was giving up on that state, even though Kerry was just there.

Kerry worshipped at the Mount Hermon AME Church in Fort Lauderdale. He sought to ease concerns “about the possibilities of problems of this and that if you go and vote. Don’t worry … I’ve put out the strongest legal team in the history of our efforts.”

“We have an obligation to lift people up and we have an ability in nine days to make a choice to do that,” Kerry said.

—

Tom Raum reported from Washington and Nedra Pickler from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., with additional reporting from Jennifer Loven in Waco, Texas.

—

On the Net:

Bush campaign: http://www.georgewbush.com

Kerry campaign: http://www.johnkerry.com