|
Home>News Center>World | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Kerry says Bush 'out of touch' with Americans
Democratic Sen. John Kerry accused President Bush of being "out of ideas, out of touch and unwilling to change" as he kicked off the closing phase of his White House bid on Friday.
Speaking at a Milwaukee rally, Kerry said Bush's botched leadership made the economy lackluster, hurt Americans' living standards and made the Republican the first president in 72 years to fail to create a single job while in office.
"As President Reagan once said, facts are stubborn things," Kerry told a packed auditorium. "The president has proven ... that he's out of touch, out of ideas, and unwilling to change course. He can spin until he's dizzy, but ... who does he think the American people are going to believe -- George Bush or their own eyes?"
Bush, he said, "either doesn't understand what's happening to the average family in America or, he understands and he just doesn't care."
The senator from Massachusetts said a Bush victory in the Nov. 2 election would mean four more years of Americans losing jobs, losing health care and suffering from falling incomes while the government deficit spirals ever higher.
"If this is what he is proud of, I would hate to see what he is ashamed of," Kerry said.
Focusing on pocketbook issues in a state that has lost a large portion of its manufacturing jobs in recent years, Kerry lambasted Bush for not stemming the outsourcing of U.S. jobs overseas and for giving tax breaks to millionaires and large companies at the expense of working Americans.
TAX RETURN
As Kerry spoke, his wife, ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry, released part of her 2003 tax return, which showed that she paid more than $798,000 in federal and state income taxes on gross taxable income of $2.3 million, primarily from dividends and interest from Heinz family trusts.
She also earned $2.78 million in interest from tax-free bonds.
Al Gore won Wisconsin's 10 Electoral College votes in 2000 by a margin of 6,000 votes and with just 18 days to Election Day it remains one of less than a dozen battleground states in the campaign. Bush also campaigned in Wisconsin on Friday.
Kerry spent the day traveling through Wisconsin on a bus. At one stop, Olympic gold medal winners Julie Foudy and Abby Wambach of the U.S. women's soccer team endorsed him. After being almost mobbed by dozens of squealing teenagers, Kerry awkwardly kicked a ball about before answering questions from the girls like, "Do you have a dog?" and "Do you love Wisconsin?"
At an early evening rally in Sheboygan, Kerry again indicted Bush for failing on domestic issues but also repeated a mantra of his campaign lately -- that Bush rushed to war in Iraq unnecessarily, diverting troops from Afghanistan.
Responding to Kerry's latest criticisms by citing a two-decade congressional record of voting for certain tax increases, the Bush campaign used the same words as Kerry, calling him "out of touch" with ordinary Americans.
Kerry also suggested that a second term for Bush could bring the return of the military draft - something that deeply divided Americans during the Vietnam War.
"With George Bush, the plan for Iraq is more of the same and the great potential of the draft," Kerry said in an interview in Iowa's Des Moines Register newspaper.
The Bush campaign said Kerry's comments were "fear-mongering" and showed him as "willing to do or say anything to score political points."
Buoyed by strong performances in three presidential debates against Bush, Kerry has become more energized. Whereas a few months ago he delivered his stump speech in a rambling, almost somnolent tone, he now seems livelier. Bush opened a 4-point -- 48 percent to 44 percent -- lead over Kerry in the latest Reuters/Zogby poll, released on Friday. The poll has a 2.9 percentage point margin of error.
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
