Barack Obama (the future Democratic Senator from Illinois) is a rising star and one to watch at this week's convention in Boston...Michigan's very popular Democratic Governor (Jennifer Granholm) will be speaking too...
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Democrats Prepare to Put the Spotlight on Kerry
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
July 25, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Democrats prepared today to open a national nominating convention in Boston that they said would spotlight Senator John Kerry as a man of principle and common sense who would give a dramatically higher priority to forging strong alliances and international relationships.
The convention, which runs from Monday to Thursday, will bring thousands of Democratic activists and thousands more journalists to a city known as a bastion of liberal politics, even as Mr. Kerry -- in a statistical tie with President Bush, according to recent opinion polls -- seeks to broaden his appeal toward the center.
It will be the first time the historic Massachusetts city has hosted a convention.
As the first national party convention held since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks -- and amid reports that terrorists may seek to strike in Boston -- it will also be by far the most closely guarded. Major thoroughfares through the downtown area, near the Fleet Center arena that will host the meetings, will be closed for part of the week.
The Democrats' slogan for the closing session on Thursday night, when Mr. Kerry will be formally nominated, is "Stronger at Home, Respected in the World." And Democratic advisers repeatedly argued today that under a President Kerry, the United States would pursue a far more internationalist foreign policy.
Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a former United Nations ambassador who had been mentioned as a possible running mate for Mr. Kerry, said that convention speakers would underscore the contrast with Mr. Bush's foreign policy.
Under Mr. Bush, "we pursued in Iraq a unilateral policy," Mr. Richardson said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation." "We shunned allies, we shunned NATO," and now, "We're paying for that."
If Mr. Kerry is elected, Mr. Richardson added, "He will reach out to Muslim countries, he will reach out to the European Union, to NATO."
Mr. Kerry, who voted to authorize the Iraq war, has criticized its planning and vowed to bring in more foreign troops. But it is not clear what countries might supply them.
Mr. Richardson said that Mr. Kerry, with a record defined by wartime service in Vietnam and 19 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was "ready to assume an internationalist posture," an implicit slap at Mr. Bush.
But Mr. Richardson and other Democrats insisted that the accent in Boston would be on the positive.
Democrats -- divided and discouraged just a year ago amid Mr. Bush's early Iraq war successes -- have since done much to unite behind their dislike of Mr. Bush. With the party's base said to be unusually united, party leaders plan to use the four days in Boston to beckon to undecided voters. To do this, they promise a positive tone, one palatable to those in the center and acceptable to those further left.
There is little gray area in the American electorate this year.
Perhaps 10 to 20 percent of the electorate now falls in nervously calm seas between the stormy feelings on either side. Voters tend to support Mr. Bush strongly or disapprove of him with equal vehemence.
Feelings toward Mr. Kerry are not yet as intense or defined; Democrats hope the convention will help.
A young black politician seen as a rising Democratic star, State Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, insisted that a positive message is what Americans want.
"That slash-and-burn politics hasn't been effective," he said on "Face the Nation." "People just want practical, common-sense solutions."
Mr. Obama, who is considered well-placed this fall to become the fifth African-American in the United States Senate, will deliver the convention's keynote address on Tuesday, focusing on Mr. Kerry's life and political career. The candidate's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, will speak too, as will the senior Massachusetts senator, Edward M. Kennedy.
Mr. Richardson agreed with Mr. Obama that the Democrats' message would be upbeat. "We're going to be talking about positive issues," he said on "Fox News Sunday." "We're not going to be bashing the president at every turn."
The convention's opening evening will feature two former presidents: Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, as well as former Vice President Al Gore.
Mr. Clinton, whose controversial tenure in office resurfaced in the news with the publication of his autobiography, "My Life," will be introduced by his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. She was not originally listed as a speaker. The suspicion, officially denied, was that the Kerry-Edwards team did not want to share the stage with a woman thought to be a possible future rival.
In a bid to project unity, however, Mr. Kerry's key Democratic opponents in the primary campaign will speak in Boston: Howard Dean and Representative Richard A. Gephardt on Tuesday, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman and Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the former supreme NATO commander, on Thursday.
Mr. Dean's injection of feisty energy helped propel the Democrats' return to a considerable state of unity, as did Mr. Bush's problems in Iraq.
Mr. Kerry's poll ratings have risen, meanwhile, on domestic issues like the economy and health care -- with leads over Mr. Bush of up to 17 percentage points. Mr. Bush's biggest margin, of 22 percentage points in one survey, comes on an issue that will be impossible for the thousands congregating in Boston to ignore: terrorism.
Republicans, nonetheless, remain optimistic. They say the economy is recovering months sooner than it did in the failed re-election campaign of Mr. Bush's father in 1992. Nor, they say, did Democrats gain much from the nomination of Senator Edwards as running mate.
The eventual political impact of the economy remains unclear. While growth has been strong nationally, it has been slower to reach battleground states like Michigan, which was hit hard by the loss of industrial jobs.
That state's Democratic governor, Jennifer M. Granholm, called jobs "a huge issue." Mr. Kerry, she said today, had a "very detailed plans on all of these issues" and would "be a tiger at the World Trade Organization, make sure we stand up for our businesses."
Ms. Granholm, considered another rising Democratic star, will address the convention on Wednesday, the night when Mr. Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, will be formally introduced. Mr. Richardson will also speak that night.
Mr. Kerry will formally accept the nomination on Thursday. The evening's speakers will draw attention to his record as a decorated patrol-boat pilot in Vietnam. He will be introduced by the former senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in Vietnam, as well as by Mr. Kerry's wartime crewmates.
In an effort to underscore Mr. Kerry's military experience and credentials as a potential commander-in-chief, every day of the convention will see at least one veteran-oriented event.
But Mr. Kerry has struggled to exploit the factors that have depressed Mr. Bush's popularity, beginning with the war on Iraq.
Mr. Kerry and other convention speakers will try to fill in a portrait of the candidate as a man of clear conviction, taking aim at the frequent Republican caricature of the candidate as a perpetual flip-flopper.
But Republican operatives will be ready at every corner in Boston (as Democrats will be available in late August at the Republican convention in New York) to reinforce the notion of a man of shifting belief.
"People need to know him as a person," Ms. Granholm said. "He is a man of faith, he is a person of conviction."
Americans, she added, "need to get a gut feeling about him."
Despite record fund-raising and campaign spending to date by both parties, many Americans feel they do not know that much about Mr. Kerry, surveys show.
"The American people haven't focused," Mr. Richardson said. Mr. Kerry "is far ahead of any challenger that we've had" at this point in the race.
Some Bush advisers have tried to set a high bar, saying national support for the Kerry-Edwards ticket should soar by as many as 15 points by the convention's end. But Democrats point to the relatively small number of undecided voters to say the bump could be far smaller.
"I don't think we'll get very much of a bounce," Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania said on "Fox News Sunday," predicting that it might be "a point or two."
nytimes.com |
