Kerry Entering Changed Landscape

The political atmosphere Sen. John F. Kerry will find when he steps back on the campaign trail this week after a quiet period spent vacationing, fundraising and recuperating from shoulder surgery is more complex than the one he left behind.

After months of having to counter news reports about stagnant employment, President Bush now can promote economic figures that show 308,000 jobs were created in February -- giving his administration a boost and blunting a favorite line of attack by the Democrats.

At the same time, Kerry’s low profile has allowed Republicans to freely paint the Massachusetts senator as a tax-and-spend liberal, both on the trail and in largely unanswered advertising salvos.

Some Democrats have worried openly about Kerry’s strategy, saying he needs to more clearly and actively present an alternative to the Bush administration -- not to mention spend more time campaigning.

But the news for Bush has not been all good of late.

The administration has been battling criticism after testimony from Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief who told the independent panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks that the Bush White House was more interested in invading Iraq than in combating terrorism. The issue will remain on the radar this week, with national security advisor Condoleezza Rice set to testify before the commission.

Kerry campaign officials said he planned a slight shift in his economic argument this week -- but will not temper his attacks on Bush for presiding over the biggest net loss in jobs of any administration.

In an address at Washington’s Georgetown University on Wednesday, Kerry will focus on fiscal responsibility, outlining how he would deal with the federal budget deficit as president.

“Fiscal responsibility is the theme of the week: Bush’s runaway deficits, his dereliction of duty -- and making it clear that fiscal responsibility is not an abstract idea,” one campaign official said. “It has a direct impact on economic growth and the quality of our economy.”

The campaign said Sunday that Kerry was not shifting gears in response to the new employment data. After clinching the Democratic nomination for president, officials said, Kerry decided to give a series of speeches on various economic issues. Last month, he addressed tax policy and job creation in Detroit. Wednesday is fiscal responsibility. Still to come is a speech on jobs, technology and the economy of the future.

“Our plan has not changed one iota,” Kerry spokesman David Wade said. “But I do think it’s important to talk about fiscal responsibility.... This president said he would not go into deficit, would not go into the Social Security surplus. We were into deficit before Sept. 11. The record deficits and the complete abandonment of fiscal responsibility is unprecedented.”

While economic issues long have been a cornerstone of Kerry’s campaign, political experts said that the new employment numbers meant the senator would have to be increasingly nimble in addressing the jobs picture from the campaign trail.

“The jobs numbers were good for America but bad for John Kerry,” said Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University. “If the job creation number turns back to a more typical trend line of the last three years, the Kerry campaign still has a strong and viable issue to push forward. If it’s the start of an economic boom, the Kerry campaign is grievously wounded.”

While Kerry’s economic themes ultimately will not change, said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of a nonpartisan political newsletter, “he will seem inherently out of touch if we have three months of good jobs numbers.”

But Wade argued Sunday that Bush was still “the first president since Herbert Hoover to lose jobs in his presidency,” and said Kerry would not abandon this argument. There have, however, already been subtle changes in the campaign’s rhetoric.

Kerry and his surrogates have spent months talking about how “3 million Americans have lost their jobs” while Bush has been in the White House. But in a full-page fundraising ad launched Sunday in the New York Times, the campaign tempered its language.

“On George W. Bush’s watch, record surpluses have been turned into record deficits,” read the Kerry ad, which said that “more than 2 million Americans have lost their jobs.”

Since a successful operation to repair an injured tendon in his right shoulder Wednesday, Kerry has mostly spent time meeting with aides and plotting strategy.

On Sunday, he took his first small step back onto the campaign trail, attending services at the Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church in Roxbury before flying to Washington.

While Kerry did not address the congregation, the Rev. Gregory Groover did the honors for him, telling the Palm Sunday worshippers, “We’re thankful that there’s going to be a revolution in this country.... We say, God, bring him on, the next president of the United States, the honorable John F. Kerry.”

Kerry has been observing doctor’s orders not to hoist babies or toss footballs, but he couldn’t help himself Sunday when it came to hand-shaking. He started off using his left arm, but it didn’t take long for him to switch to his right.

Kerry plans to meet today with the Washington-based press corps before flying to Cincinnati on Tuesday to promote his job creation plan. Ohio is shaping up to be one of the most critical battleground states in the general election.

Kerry will continue his 20-city fundraising tour this week, with events planned in Washington and Chicago. Even though there are seven months of campaigning to go before the fall election, political experts say the Democratic challenger has lost ground at an important early stage. Bush spent an estimated $40 million on advertising in the last month.

Kerry “needs to present a more vigorous front,” Berry said. “He needs to get on a bus and start visiting 12 towns in Ohio in two days.”

While it’s still early, Berry said, the senator’s pace is “just not adequate. It’s almost the Rose Garden strategy without the Rose Garden.”