Bush's Campaign Emphasizes Role of Leader in War
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and ADAM NAGOURNEY - NYT
WASHINGTON, March 16 — A year after ordering the invasion of Iraq, President Bush is moving the war to the forefront of his re-election effort with a weeklong barrage of speeches, an orchestrated set of interviews with senior Pentagon officials and a new television advertisement questioning Senator John Kerry's support of the troops.
Mr. Bush's advisers said Tuesday that the president intended to press his case that the world was safer with Saddam Hussein out of power, and to use the first anniversary of the war's start to draw sharp contrasts with Mr. Kerry over foreign policy and leadership.
But the moves, which aides described as a new chapter in the political campaign against Mr. Kerry, came as the bombings in Spain stirred more criticism of Mr. Bush's Iraq policy. They underlined the extent to which the campaign had become subject to the unpredictability of overseas events, and pointed up the complications Mr. Bush faces in trying to balance the demands of the Oval Office with a re-election effort.
In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Mr. Bush showed a flash of how confrontational he planned to be on Mr. Kerry's foreign affairs record. With the Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, at his side, Mr. Bush demanded that Mr. Kerry provide evidence to support his suggestion last week that foreign leaders want to see Mr. Bush defeated.
"If you're going to make an accusation in the course of a presidential campaign, you've got to back it up with facts," Mr. Bush told reporters.
Mr. Bush then was asked if he and Mr. Balkenende had agreed on whether Dutch troops would remain in Iraq. Neither of them gave a firm answer.
At a campaign appearance in West Virginia, Mr. Kerry shot back at Mr. Bush, caustically challenging his credibility on an array of fronts.
"Nothing is more important than telling the American people the truth about the economy, health care, and war and peace," Mr. Kerry told veterans on Tuesday, the day he won the Illinois primary and claimed he had officially become the Democratic nominee. "This administration has yet to level with the American people."
The White House had long planned to use this week to focus attention on the war, terrorism and national security. The White House is counting on those issues to build support for the president at a time when the other big subject of the campaign, the lack of jobs being created by the economy, is working against Mr. Bush.
On Thursday, Mr. Bush will travel to Fort Campbell, Ky., for a speech before what the White House said would be 20,000 troops and their families. He plans to thank them for their sacrifices in Iraq and Afghanistan and to point to the progress being made in both nations.
Mr. Bush is also expected to highlight his role as commander in chief when he delivers an address to his first full-scale campaign rally of the year, in Orlando, Fla., on Saturday.
At the same time, the administration is going after Mr. Kerry. Vice President Dick Cheney will begin a new attack on Mr. Kerry in California on Wednesday.
The new Bush television commercial, which began airing in the swing state of West Virginia on Tuesday, sought to discredit Mr. Kerry's defense credentials by attacking him for voting against the $87 billion bill last year that financed operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"John Kerry: Wrong on Defense," the advertisement concludes.
Mr. Kerry had initially voted for the resolution authorizing war in Iraq, but White House aides said he subsequently expressed enough ambivalence about the war to allow them to portray him as opposing a war that enjoys wide support among Americans.
Mr. Kerry dismissed the advertisement. "I understand that the Republican attack machine has welcomed me to West Virginia today with another distortion and misleading statement," he said.
"I'm not going to worry about them misleading because we're going to just keep pounding away at the truth," Mr. Kerry told the crowd of veterans, who wore a rainbow of caps, jackets and pins representing all the military branches and recent conflicts. "We're going to build an army of truth-tellers."
Mr. Kerry added, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it," referring to an amendment he supported that would have rescinded some tax cuts to finance the war.
Mr. Kerry did not respond to Mr. Bush's call that he explain his suggestion that foreign leaders were rooting for his victory. Asked about it, an aide, David Wade, said: "President Bush is launching political attacks from the White House because he can't defend what he's done in the White House."
Mr. Kerry's advisers asserted that Mr. Bush's focus on the war in Iraq reflected concern in the White House that the president's conduct of the war had been a failure. The advisers said Mr. Kerry welcomed a fight with Mr. Bush on the issue.
Mary Beth Cahill, Mr. Kerry's campaign manager, called the Bush re-election effort a "mark of desperation."
Ms. Cahill added, "They can't find the weapons of mass destruction so they are pulling out all their weapons to try to spin a failure."
White House officials argued that the events in Spain would not undercut public support of the war.
A senior White House adviser who would only discuss the details of Mr. Bush's campaign planning on condition of anonymity noted that polls showed strong public support for the war and asserted that Mr. Kerry was making a mistake.
The adviser said: "You ask them this: `The Bush campaign is absolutely willing to have this conversation carried on for the next 216 days. Are you?' It should be one of the big discussion s between us."
Other Bush aides said that they were not altering their plans to blanket the nation with a message that Mr. Bush was a tested leader while Mr. Kerry could not be counted on.
"The American people have etched in their minds the president's leadership in a time of crisis," said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. "That's something voters find comfort in going into an election. Whether it has to be emphasized or not, we've made clear that one of the most important issues is how the two candidates would conduct the war on terror and protect America. There's a clear choice."
By asserting that the war in Iraq is an integral part of the battle against terrorism — an assertion that many of Mr. Bush's critics dispute — the White House has to some extent bet his political standing as the nation's post-Sept. 11 leader on the bloody, costly effort to stabilize Iraq.
But in making the case that toppling Mr. Hussein was a vital step in protecting the United States from terrorism, the White House is also setting out a broad strategic framework built on the idea that bringing peace and democracy to Iraq and then the rest of the Middle East would generally undercut the forces that have bred Islamic militancy.
Mr. Bartlett said Mr. Bush would discuss that theme on Friday in a speech at the White House. The speech will be delivered to an audience of ambassadors from nearly all the nations that have lent some support to the fight against terrorism and is intended to rally support for the job of stabilizing Iraq and the entire Middle East, he said.
Mr. Bush's appearances this week are part of a coordinated, administrationwide effort to tell voters that the United States is making progress in fighting terrorism, that Mr. Bush deserves the credit and that Mr. Kerry has shown himself too willing to bend to the political winds when it comes to national security.
The Pentagon threw open its doors to local radio talk show hosts on Tuesday and made available to them Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as well as generals and other military and civilian officials.
Mr. Kerry does not plan to let foreign policy and military issues drop from sight, either. On Wednesday in Washington, he plans to give a speech on national security and to propose a "Military Families Bill of Rights."
Jodi Wilgoren contributed reporting from Huntington, W.Va., for this article.
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