John Kerry entered the last phase of his long pursuit of the United States presidency on Thursday, directly challenging President George Bush’s image as a tough wartime leader and promising to ”fight a smarter, more effective war on terror”.
The speech, the most crucial in Senator Kerry’s political career, took George Bush to task on what should be the president’s strongest ground. He pledged: ”I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response.”
He added: ”I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as president.” But he added: ”We need to be looked up to and not just feared.”
Polls consistently show most Americans trust the president more to keep them safe. In an address to the Democratic party that focused on foreign policy and leaned heavily on martial rhetoric, Kerry set out to change their mind.
”The stakes are high. We are a nation at war — a global war on terror against an enemy unlike any we have ever known before,” the Democratic presidential nominee said, according to early excerpts from his speech.
In a passage intended to combat his portrayal by Republicans as being ”soft” on defence, Kerry went on: ”I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security. And I will build a stronger American military.”
He said he would add 40 000 active duty troops to the armed forces and double the strength of US special forces ”to conduct anti-terrorist operations”.
The speech comes at a time when his election race against President Bush is deadlocked, and Republicans have had some success in painting him as a ”flip-flopper” without solid convictions.
In Thursday night’s acceptance address, Kerry sought to refute Republican claims that his advocacy of multilateralism would make him a weak leader. ”Strength is more than tough words,” he said. ”After decades of experience in national security, I know the reach of our power and I know the power of our ideals. We need to make America once again a beacon in the world.”
Although he did not attack President Bush directly, he implicitly questioned the administration’s conduct of the war.
”I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war … And I will appoint an attorney general who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States.
”Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn’t make it so. Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn’t make it so. And proclaiming mission accomplished certainly doesn’t make it so.”
He said the US would not regain its credibility abroad or be able to bring its troops back from Iraq ”until we have a president who restores America’s respect and leadership — so we don’t have to go it alone in the world”.
He added: ”As president, I will fight a smarter, more effective war on terror.”
Two wars hung over Kerry’s speech, Iraq and Vietnam. His ”band of brothers” from his days on a navy patrol boat were prominent once more, and a Vietnam amputee and former Georgia senator, Max Cleland, introduced the candidate, praying tribute to his combat and his later opposition to the war.
Senator Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, will on Friday embark on a coast-to-coast tour which their strategists hope could open up a lead over Bush at a pivotal moment in the campaign. The trip, billed the Believe in America tour, will take the two candidates to most of the tightly contested battleground states, starting with Pennsylvania.
The two senators’ campaign managers will be anxiously waiting for the post-convention polls providing the first national verdict on Kerry’s nearly hour-long performance last night. Nearly all polls show a virtually neck-and-neck race. If the Kerry-Edwards campaign fails to achieve a ”convention bounce” after a week of largely uncritical television coverage, then it faces a difficult autumn.
Bush will also start campaigning again on Friday, in the lead-up to the Republicans’ convention at the end of August.
The Bush campaign has predicted that the Kerry convention ”bounce” will be as much as 15 percentage points, but Democrats countered that the prediction was a ploy to raise expectations artificially high.
A Democratic official said that 5-6% was the best the campaign could hope for in a year when fewer than 8% have yet to make up their minds.
In a reflection of jitters yesterday, Kerry pulled his key strategists out of a scheduled breakfast session with high rolling financial supporters for help on his speech.
Kerry will set out on the campaign trail on Friday armed with a slickly made nine-minute documentary of his life by an Oscar-winning documentary director James Moll, with help from Steven Spielberg, and narrated by the Hollywood star Morgan Freeman. – Guardian Unlimited Â