Bush Blasts Kerry on Swing Through Texas

President Bush crisscrossed his home state of Texas on Monday to collect $3 million in campaign donations and inspect prize-winning Brahman cattle at a rodeo and livestock show.

“I thought there was a lot of bull in Washington, D.C.,” the president joked as he admired a dozen red and gray Brahman heifers during a 40-minute visit to the Houston Livestock Show, despite the gender of the cattle in question.

The president used the trip to launch a new attack on Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, whom he accused of gutting funding for intelligence.

Bush accused Kerry of sponsoring a bill in 1995 that would have cut $1.5 billion from funding for intelligence agencies. The Kerry campaign countered that the bill was aimed at eliminating over $1 billion in unspent funds that a spy satellite agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, accumulated as part of an undisclosed and controversial real estate deal.

“Once again, Sen. Kerry is trying to have it both ways. He’s for good intelligence, yet he was willing to gut the intelligence services. And that is no way to lead a nation in a time of war,” Bush told donors at a fundraiser in Dallas.

Minutes later, at an outdoor rally in West Palm Beach, Fla., Kerry accused Bush of avoiding accountability for his administration’s intelligence record by stonewalling the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“If the president of the United States can find the time to go to a rodeo, he can find the time to do more than one hour in front of a commission that is investigating what happened to America’s intelligence and why we are not stronger today,” Kerry said.

The quick attack and counterattack demonstrated that both campaigns are already in high battle mode. In his two fundraising speeches, Bush ramped his anti-Kerry rhetoric a notch higher than even a few days ago.

“Sen. Kerry voted for the Patriot Act, for NAFTA, for the No Child Left Behind Act and for the use of force in Iraq,” Bush said in Dallas. “Now he opposes the Patriot Act, NAFTA, the No Child Left Behind Act and the liberation of Iraq. My opponent clearly has strong beliefs -- they just don’t last very long.”

Kerry has explained his changing views by saying he endorsed the original intent of those bills, but objects to the way the Bush administration has carried them out.

The Bush campaign has been honing its attacks on Kerry’s record on national security. For his part, Kerry said Monday that in private conversations, foreign leaders have told him that they hope he beats Bush in the fall.

“I’ve met foreign leaders who can’t go out and say this publicly, but boy, they look at you and say, ‘You’ve got to win this; you’ve got to beat this guy; we need a new policy’ -- things like that,” Kerry said at a fundraiser in Hollywood, Fla.

Kerry spokesman David Wade declined to identify the foreign leaders to whom Kerry referred, by name or by country.

The Republican National Committee issued a news release later in the day, ridiculing Kerry’s remarks by suggesting he is warmly viewed in North Korea and France and by various European newspapers and entertainers.

And Vice President Dick Cheney joined the fray from Des Moines, where he was raising money for a congressional candidate.

He criticized Kerry, arguing that the presumptive Democratic nominee prefers an “inadequate strategy” of law enforcement to deal with terrorist attacks on the United States.

He talked about a conversation he had with an American soldier in Italy, who told him, “Indecision kills.”

“These are not times for leaders who shift with the political winds, saying one thing one day and another the next,” Cheney said. “We need a commander in chief of clear vision and steady determination.”

Kerry responded in kind during a speech with 500 supporters in Tampa, Fla. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Cheney; let me tell you something, Mr. President,” he said. “Bad, rushed decisions kill too!”

The crowd cheered as he continued: “And not giving American citizens healthcare kills too. And turning your back on the environment and going backward on clean air and clean water kills too!”

The president collected $1.5 million at each of two fundraisers in Dallas and Houston from a total of 2,200 donors. Since last summer, he has amassed a campaign war chest of more than $150 million.

By contrast, Kerry has raised about $40 million, although he spent much of it during the primary campaign.

While touring his home territory, Bush added a section to his speech that referred to social issues including abortion, cloning and gay marriage.

“We will not stand for the treatment of any life as a commodity to be experimented upon or exploited or cloned,” Bush told donors in Houston. “We stand for the confirmation of judges who strictly and faithfully interpret the law. We will not stand for judges who undermine democracy by legislating from the bench and try to remake the culture of America by court order.”

Bush’s fundraisers were held a day before his home state holds its presidential primary. His appearance at the livestock show, which was billed as a presidential event, means he can charge the bulk of the trip to taxpayers rather than his campaign.

Under long-established rules, presidential reelection campaigns only need to pay for travel and staff costs for the portion of the president’s trip that was not “official” travel -- in this case, the distance from the rodeo to the fundraiser, but not the Air Force One flight from Dallas to Houston.

“This will follow the normal practice, which is the campaign events are funded by the campaign, official events are funded by official sources,” said Trent Duffy, deputy White House press secretary. “The visit to the livestock show is part of the president’s official capacity.”

Bush paid a similar visit to the opening of the Daytona 500 stock car race in January -- a trip also deemed official travel by the White House.

The president declined to answer questions from the traveling press corps Monday, but he gave a short interview to a pro-Republican political commentator from a local television station, ABC affiliate KTRK.

Asked about the controversy over whether it was proper for his campaign ads to include footage from the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York’s twin towers, Bush said he would not shy away from the imagery.

“It was a major moment in our nation’s history. It was a time when the enemy declared war on us. And as I tell people, war is what they got with George W. Bush as president,” Bush said as he stood in the cattle ring at the livestock show wearing a leather rodeo jacket.

“And we’re going to win the war.”

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Reynolds reported from Dallas and Houston. Gold reported from West Palm Beach, Hollywood and Tampa, Fla.