By Compiled from Times wires
Published October 12, 2004
SANTA FE, N.M. - Sen. John Kerry and President Bush alighted in New Mexico on Monday, taking their campaigns to a state with five precious electoral votes and an electorate so divided that Al Gore won it by a mere 366 votes four years ago.
Kerry pushed his energy policy, comparing the ambition of his plan for energy independence to Franklin Roosevelt's Manhattan Project, a massive scientific undertaking that gave birth to the atomic bomb.
Bush, in the oil patch town of Hobbs just across the Texas border, kept up his criticism of Kerry as soft on terrorism and ridiculed Kerry's recently stated goal of reducing terrorism to "a nuisance."
The day underscored the significance of this southwestern state, but also highlighted what each candidate considers his main strength.
For Kerry, the message of energy independence is a crossover issue that addresses such domestic policies as conservation, environment and rising oil prices while serving as a way for the United States to extricate itself from turmoil in the Persian Gulf.
For Bush, attacking Kerry's stance on terrorism plays to his strengths with the electorate. Polls indicate Americans prefer Bush to Kerry in leading the war against terrorists.
Kerry offered no new proposals Monday, but he described his plan to develop new clean fuels, produce more fuel-efficient cars, expand exploration of natural gas and reduce energy costs for Americans as a visionary idea that rivaled not only FDR's efforts to harness atomic power, but also John Kennedy's goal of putting a man on the moon.
"When it comes to developing a real energy policy, George Bush has run out of gas," Kerry told several hundred supporters in Santa Fe.
Kerry says his plan would make certain that by 2020, 20 percent of American electricity use would come from renewable sources such as ethanol and biodiesel fuels.
With oil prices at $53 a barrel last week, Kerry blamed Bush for not pressing oil ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to release more oil. In fact, the president of the United States has no control over world oil prices. They tend to be cyclical or, as they appear to be now, affected by the inability of oil producers to keep up with growing demand in China and other Asian countries.
The Bush campaign accused Kerry of obstructing energy legislation in the Senate that contained provisions for renewable energy.
"John Kerry's obstruction of a national energy policy makes his current political opportunism completely hypocritical," Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said. "John Kerry will tell people whatever he thinks they want to hear, and his multiple positions are destroying his credibility with the American people."
Kerry, like other Democrats, said he objected to the energy bill because it contained too many provisions that would benefit oil corporations.
In Hobbs, Bush appeared at a morning rally designed to appeal to the state's large number of Hispanic voters. He said he would be tougher than Kerry in the fight against terrorism and repeated earlier charges that Kerry's plan to repeal tax cuts for wealthy Americans wouldn't produce enough money to fund the programs he has promised.
Bush, continuing a line of attack the campaign opened Sunday, quoted a Sunday New York Times Magazine piece in which Kerry said: "We have to get to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance.
"As a former law enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution," Kerry told the magazine. "We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life."
Bush said Kerry's comment displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of the war against terrorism.
"Earlier he questioned whether it is really a war at all, describing it primarily as a law enforcement and intelligence-gathering operation instead of a threat that demands full use of American power," Bush said in Hobbs.
"Now just this weekend, Sen. Kerry talked of reducing terrorism to "nuisance' and compared it to prostitution and illegal gambling. See, I couldn't disagree more. Our goal is not to reduce terror to some acceptable level of nuisance. Our goal is to defeat terror by staying on the offensive."
Later in the day, Kerry's campaign circulated 2-year-old remarks by retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President Gerald Ford and the first President Bush. On Oct. 5, 2002, Scowcroft told United States Institute of Peace's PeaceWatch that the war on terrorism can be won, in the same way the war on organized crime can be won. "There will not be a treaty signed aboard the battleship Missouri, but we can break its back so that it is only a horrible nuisance and not a paralyzing influence on our societies."
The president also mocked Kerry's stance on a Bush-backed forest law that makes it easier for timber companies to cut wood from national forests. Bush argues that thinning forests helps prevent devastating fires.
"My opponent was against it. Now, he says he likes parts of the law," Bush said. "I guess it's not only the wildfires that shift in the wind."
Kerry favors focusing thinning operations on the parts of fire-prone forests that pose the most immediate threat to communities. He criticizes Bush's broader approach as a boon to big timber companies.
In brief . . .
VANDALISM ALLEGED: The Bush-Cheney campaign on Monday accused the AFL-CIO of vandalism at some of its offices. The labor federation denied the allegations.
In a letter to the president of the AFL-CIO, Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot cited injuries and damages at an office in Orlando and disruptions in Michigan. Racicot said the protests came after incidents at other offices in Ohio, West Virginia, Florida and Tennessee.
Denise Mitchell, a spokeswoman for the AFL-CIO, said union members delivered postcards and petitions against overtime pay cuts and Racicot is using that to imply a coordinated effort to vandalize campaign offices.
DEBATE VIEWERSHIP: The second Bush-Kerry presidential debate drew a smaller audience than the first but viewer interest remained high, according to figures released Monday.
An estimated 46.7-million viewers watched Friday's debate, compared to the 62.5-million who viewed the Sept. 30 contest.
The final debate between Bush and Kerry, on domestic issues, will be held Wednesday night in Tempe, Ariz.
