Issue by Issue, Rivals See Very Different Americas
The New York Times
July 20, 2004
CAMPAIGN MEMO
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
WASHINGTON, July 19 - They campaign in the same places:
rural stretches of West Virginia, the suburbs of Philadelphia,
farm country in Ohio. They talk about the same issues: the economy,
tax cuts, the war in Iraq, the nation's security. They are scrapping
for many of the same voters.
But what they are saying could hardly be more different.
To spend a few days with President Bush and Senator John Kerry
as they test the stump speeches they are preparing for the fall campaign
is to hear two starkly different visions of where the nation is and where
it should be going. This emerging debate suggests that after years in
which major party candidates sought to win elections by blurring their
differences, these two men are preparing for a contest of striking contrasts.
One day Mr. Bush is heralding his tax cuts as the engine that,
as he told voters recently in Wisconsin, has lifted the nation into
an economic recovery. He describes the economy as "strong
and getting stronger." Two days later, Mr. Kerry, the presumptive
Democratic presidential nominee, is in West Virginia calling those
same tax cuts a threat to health care and education, and a burden
that has saddled the nation with a debt that is throttling hope for long-term prosperity.
Mr. Kerry looks to Iraq and sees a war that has demoralized this country,
caused the needless deaths of young Americans, spawned new terrorists
in the Middle East and alienated allies around the world. Mr. Bush looks
at the same war and sees an American enterprise that removed a dangerous
dictator, struck a blow against terrorism and is fostering the growth of democracy.
Mr. Kerry talks about health care as he promotes an ambitious plan
to expand coverage for the uninsured and lower health insurance costs
for middle- and lower-income Americans. When Mr. Bush raises the
same subject, he talks fleetingly about his considerably more modest
plan for tax credits to help low and moderate-income families buy insurance.
The president grows more animated in denouncing trial lawyers whose
malpractice lawsuits, he said, have driven health care costs out of control.
Not incidentally, that allows Mr. Bush to throw an elbow at Mr. Kerry's
running mate, Senator John Edwards, a trial lawyer who made millions
suing doctors in North Carolina.
There are some parallels between Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry as they
take their shows on the road. Both are campaigning in some of the
more remote parts of the United States, seeking support from rural voters.
And both certainly like to talk, and tend to go on a rather long
time - 40 minutes at a clip for Mr. Bush and generally about 30 minutes
for Mr. Kerry, though he has been known to go considerably longer.
At a certain point, even the most partisan of crowds grow a little
restless with both candidates.
But otherwise the similarities are few. On Iraq and the economy,
on the United States' place in the world and the candidates' views
of each other, it sometimes seems as if Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry
are campaigning in different countries. "We're not going to have one
of those elections where it's mealy-mouthed, and you can't tell the
difference between the two candidates," Mr. Kerry said Friday night
in Crystal City, Va., a rare instance of his saying something with
which Mr. Bush would almost certainly concur.
Part of this unusually clear choice is a reflection of these polarized times.
With their sometimes less-than-nuanced statements, attacking each other
and articulating sharply defended positions, Mr. Bush and, to a lesser extent,
Mr. Kerry are trying to energize their most hard-core supporters to turn out and vote.
The debate so far suggests how Mr. Bush's decision to govern forcefully
from the right in the wake of the 2000 election, particularly on the issue
of tax cuts, has produced a counterreaction among Democrats, a reaction
that is in turn producing an unusually unambiguous choice for voters this fall.
"This economy is strong and it's growing stronger," Mr. Bush declared
as heads nodded at the Waukesha County Exposition Center, deep
in the suburbs of Milwaukee. "Tax relief is working. It's working.
Since last August we've added 1.5 million new jobs. People are going back to work."
Mr. Kerry, speaking at the Crystal City fund-raiser, asked:
"What does it mean when you turn around and look outside
the White House and there are people wrapped up, sleeping
in blankets outside the lawn of the White House and homelessness is growing?"
He continued: "What we're going to do is crisscross this nation
and talk the truth to the American people, the truth about how
you put America to work. The truth about a tax cut that we cannot
afford and that we will roll back so we can invest in health, in education, in jobs."
The differences between the two men are not only clear in what they say
but also in what they do not talk about. Mr. Kerry talks about measures
to protect the environment, as he denounces "rolling back laws that
we spent 35 years to put in place to give us cleaner air to breathe or cleaner water to drink."
Mr. Bush does not.
He at times alludes to his support for a constitutional amendment
to bar gay marriage. "We stand for institutions like marriage and family,
which are the foundations of society," he said at a rally near Green Bay.
That is a subject that Mr. Kerry is not likely to raise.
And Mr. Bush always invokes the attacks of Sept. 11, recounting
evocatively and emotionally his visit to the World Trade Center site
after the attacks. His campaign speeches are filled with promises to make
the nation safer. "I'll never forget that day," he said recently while campaigning
in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, telling a story that always hushes the crowd.
"There were workers in hard hats shouting, 'Whatever it takes.' A guy grabbed
me by the arm - he was a firefighter or a policeman - his eyes were bloodshot.
He said, 'Don't you let me down.' "
Mr. Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts, cannot match the drama
of the presidential stories about that week. Instead, he invokes the attack
to pay tribute to municipal workers who perished; he is backed by the
union representing firefighters. At a recent rally his aides played "The Rising,"
a Bruce Springsteen song about the struggle to regroup after the terrorist attacks.
Though both men talk about values, the similarities end with that word.
For Mr. Bush, values are defined with references to church, marriage
between men and women, and restrictions on abortion. In Wisconsin,
he emphasized his support for the law banning what it calls partial-birth
abortion and for legislation requiring notification of parents when their
teenagers seek an abortion. "Yet on these positions that so many
Americans share, my opponent is on the other side," Mr. Bush said.
Mr. Kerry talks about values as a measure of the how the government
and its officials are leading the country. "Values are something you live,
in the choices of your budget, in the people that you choose to help,
in the things that you do every day to lift America up and take it to
a better place," he said in New York this month.
Stylistically, the Republican and the Democrat are different as well.
Mr. Bush's rallies are played against a backdrop of country music
and stirring patriotic tunes. Mr. Kerry is more likely to turn to Mr. Springsteen.
Mr. Bush's rallies are much more elaborately produced: his bus rolled right
into an indoor arena in Wisconsin with a burst of smoke and colored lights
that might seen more fitting to a discothèque than a presidential rally,
before depositing him by the stage. And he appears to enjoy campaigning
more than Mr. Kerry does. Mr. Bush does draw the bigger crowd,
though he has the advantage of being president. It is not unusual
to encounter people in his audience who waited six hours to get tickets,
including the occasional spectator who might not even plan to vote for him.
"I'm here to see a president," said Lynn Bressette, 40, a nurse from Marquette, Mich.
Ms. Bressette said she waited six hours for a ticket, but in this crowd
she described herself sotto voce as "a Kerry Democrat."
nytimes.com
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
