Campaigns Make Personal Attacks

Presidential politicking took a nasty personal turn Friday as George W. Bush depicted John McCain as a phony and Bill Bradley suggested Al Gore had sold out his vote on the Persian Gulf War in return for publicity.

As candidates caromed from the Midwest to the East and South, fallout from the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary continued to unsettle the contest, mostly on the Republican side. Texas Gov. Bush insisted he had no plans to retool his campaign, despite McCain’s landslide win. But he displayed an aggressive new stance, including a tough-talking ad that targeted his rival in South Carolina, site of the next big Republican contest on Feb. 19.

McCain called the spot a sign of “desperation from the Bush camp.”

In Washington, Gary Bauer formally withdrew from the GOP race, saying “the better part of valor” was to abandon his longshot quest after finishing last in Tuesday’s primary.

His exit leaves Bush, Sen. McCain of Arizona, publisher Steve Forbes and former deputy U.N. ambassador Alan Keyes as the four candidates vying for the Republican nomination.

There was good news from New York for Bush’s remaining challengers: a federal judge ordered state Republicans to open their March 7 ballot to the entire field. U.S. District Judge Edward Korman said efforts by New York Gov. George Pataki and other Bush loyalists to exclude his opponents amounted to an unfair advantage. McCain declared the ruling a blow to “machine-style political control.”

In the Democratic race, Gore took a day off the campaign trail to attend a memorial service for Robert Squier, his longtime media consultant who died recently. Bradley, meantime, continued to assail the vice president for his aggressive campaign tactics.

Addressing about 600 University of Maryland students in College Park, Bradley accused Gore of practicing politics designed to “rip your opponent’s lungs out,” saying that sort of negativity is one reason many young people are turned off by the electoral process.

“It sounds like Bradley is talking about his own campaign,” retorted Chris Lehane, a Gore spokesman.

The Gulf War issue came up when Bradley’s staff released a transcript of a TV interview with former Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.). Appearing this week on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” Simpson suggested Gore may have voted with the GOP on the Persian Gulf War in exchange for guaranteed “prime time” on the Senate floor to deliver a statement about his vote.

Lehane denied the charge, saying Gore’s 1991 vote across party lines had been one of “courage and conscience.” And a senior Senate staffer involved in the legislation expressed skepticism. “I think you’re looking at some revisionist history here,” the staffer said.

Gore was one of only 10 Democrats who voted to go to war with Iraq, rejecting the go-slow approach favored by Bradley and most others in their party.

“He’s playing to his weak knee,” Lehane said of the former basketball star.

Bush, meantime, dropped all pretense of the positive campaign he long said he wished to wage.

Stumping in Michigan in advance of the state’s Feb. 22 primary, Bush suggested--but never said outright--that McCain is a hypocrite for portraying himself as a Washington outsider. He took special aim at McCain’s role as an advocate of campaign finance reform.

“This is someone who is claiming he is free from outside interests, that he has no outside interests in his campaign,” Bush said during a campaign stop at a charter school in Detroit. “The facts are beginning to show a little bit different.”

Bush insisted he is the true outsider in the race, saying of McCain: “It’s hard to be a reformer if you’ve spent your entire career in Washington.”

As part of his more aggressive approach, Bush began airing a TV spot in South Carolina that claims McCain “echoes Washington Democrats when we need a conservative leader to challenge them.” The 30-second spot also accuses McCain of distorting Bush’s tax cut plan and support for Social Security.

But even as he stepped up his rhetoric, Bush was forced to confront continued fallout from McCain’s lopsided New Hampshire victory. Asked if the loss that Bush called “a bump in the road” had in fact ripped out his campaign’s transmission--as McCain suggested Thursday--Bush narrowed his eyes. “That’s cute,” he said.

Then he added, “Look, any time you hit a bump in the road, there’s going to be a lot of second-guessers.

“I’m going to continue the same path,” Bush insisted, even as staffers prepared for a weekend retreat to assess the state of his campaign. “I am taking the same positions. I am not going to yield.”

After 18 days filled with campaigning, Bush left Detroit for a weekend at his Texas ranch outside Waco, skipping the California Republican Party convention in Burlingame, to the chagrin of some delegates.

McCain and Forbes planned to show up in Burlingame. Last fall, Bush skipped a state party gathering in Long Beach to attend a golf tournament. This time, he is sending his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, as a surrogate.

McCain, for his part, sounded almost as if he was looking past Bush and the primary to November’s general election.

At his first stop Friday in Myrtle Beach, he had one of his biggest crowds to date at Medieval Times, a theme restaurant where actors in knight costumes engage in simulated battle for dinner patrons. Though the campaign expected 300, around 2,000 packed into the faux castle’s dimly lit main hall, standing on bar tops and spilling out the doors.

Speaking to veterans, enlisted personnel and half a dozen knights in chain mail, McCain issued a plea to so-called Reagan Democrats to cross over and vote Republican on Feb. 19.

He seemed to delight in the furor his big New Hampshire win has caused in the ranks of his own party establishment. “This is not an election. This is a crusade. I want you to join it,” he later told a crowd of about 300 at a rally in Florence.

“Let me tell you. Things are bad in Washington. Things are bad. The establishment is all lining up against me. They’re scared to death, I’m happy to tell you.”

McCain received a bit of unsolicited bipartisan support from a group of fellow U.S. senators and Vietnam veterans, a day after Bush criticized McCain’s record on veterans’ issues.

“From his courageous stand on POW/MIA affairs to his most recent advocacy of decent living standards and adequate compensation for men and women serving in the military today, Sen. McCain has earned recognition from colleagues on both sides of the aisle as a real leader on veterans’ issues,” wrote Republican Sen. Charles Hagel of Nebraska and Democrats Max Cleland of Georgia, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and Charles S. Robb of Virginia.

McCain’s irritation showed as he fumbled in answering a question about Bush’s statements. “It’s false and inaccurate. . . . He’s a big boy. Excuse me, a big man.”

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Times political writer Mark Z. Barabak and staff writers Art Pine and Janet Wilson contributed to this story.

* OFF THE BUS: CBS News hasn’t jumped aboard the news media’s presidential primary bandwagon. F1