Bush Stiffens Attack on Kerry Fiscal, Foreign Policies

President Bush on Wednesday unleashed a blistering, two-pronged attack on Sen. John F. Kerry as a “tax-and-spend liberal” whose failure to understand the changes caused by the 9/11 terrorist attacks would “weaken America and make the world more dangerous.”

The White House had billed Bush’s speech as a major new critique of Kerry’s policy positions, an effort that came amid recent opinion polls showing the presidential race tightening. The president’s words were noticeably more barbed than in the past, a possible prelude to the tone Friday night when Bush and Kerry meet in St. Louis for the second of three presidential debates.

Democrats, borrowing a golfing term for replaying a flubbed shot, called Bush’s speech a “mulligan,” and claimed it was an attempt by him to offer “untruths” he could not raise during the Sept. 30 debate because Kerry would have effectively disputed each one.

Mike McCurry, a senior Kerry advisor, asserted that the speech had an “unhinged quality of throwing charge after charge,” and he said Bush’s comments could backfire on him.

The president detailed what he said were sharp contrasts between himself and Kerry on foreign and domestic issues.

Attacking his Democratic rival’s ability to manage the conflict in Iraq, Bush said: “Sen. Kerry assures us that he’s the one to win a war he calls a mistake, an error and a diversion. But you can’t win a war you don’t believe in fighting.

“In Iraq, Sen. Kerry has a strategy of retreat; I have a strategy of victory.”

On the domestic front, Bush said, “My opponent is a tax-and-spend liberal; I’m a compassionate conservative. My opponent wants to empower government; I want to use government to empower people. My opponent seems to think all the wisdom is found in Washington, D.C.; I trust the wisdom of the American people,” he said.

Amid cheers from 1,600 supporters in a performing arts auditorium in Wilkes-Barre, Bush also assailed Kerry’s record in Congress. “During his 20 years as a senator, my opponent hasn’t had many accomplishments,” he said. “Of the hundreds of bills he submitted, only five became law. One of them was ceremonial.”

Kerry faced similar criticism during the Democratic primary race. An examination of his record found that Kerry’s focus on foreign policy and investigations rather than domestic issues tended to limit his legislative output. Also, Republicans controlled Congress or the White House or both for all but two of Kerry’s years in the Senate, hampering his opportunities to push measures into law.

Bush also said Kerry had been called the most liberal member of the Senate, a reference to ratings earlier this year by the National Journal, a nonpartisan Washington magazine.

According to Bush, Kerry “earned that title by voting for higher taxes, more regulation, more junk lawsuits and more government control over your life.”

The president alluded to his own perceived shortcomings in last Thursday’s debate, referring to the facial expressions that were widely seen as peevish. After reciting a series of Kerry statements on Iraq that sounded confusing if not contradictory, Bush deadpanned: “You hear all that, you can understand why somebody would make a face.”

Bush ardently defended his decision to invade Iraq, making no mention of the release Wednesday of a report by the top U.S. arms inspector for that country that said he had found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had produced weapons of mass destruction after 1991.

The arms inspector, Charles Duelfer of the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group, also concluded that Hussein’s ability to develop such weapons had diminished in recent years, though he said the Iraqi leader still hoped to develop illicit weapons if international sanctions were lifted.

The report appeared to undermine Bush’s prewar claims that Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons, and that he may have been rebuilding his nuclear weapons program.

But Bush said, “We knew the dictator had a history of using weapons of mass destruction, a long record of aggression and hatred for America.... There was a risk -- a real risk -- that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks. In the world after Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take.”

Kerry has termed the Iraq war a “profound diversion” from fighting Al Qaeda and capturing the leader of the terrorist group, Osama bin Laden. Kerry’s running mate, Sen. John Edwards, reiterated that view in his debate Tuesday with Vice President Dick Cheney.

Bush also pressed his case that Kerry would give excessive deference to foreign governments on national security matters. “Over the years, Sen. Kerry has looked for every excuse to constrain America’s action in the world.... This mind-set would paralyze America in a dangerous world.”

Kerry and his aides say that the president consistently mischaracterizes the senator’s position. At last week’s debate, Kerry emphasized that he would never give another nation veto power over his foreign policy.

Continuing his assault on Kerry, Bush called his Democratic rival “one of the few candidates in history to campaign on a pledge to raise taxes. And that’s the kind of promise a politician from Massachusetts usually keeps.”

Kerry has said he would roll back recent tax cuts for families earning more than $200,000 a year while enacting new tax cuts for middle-class families to pay for healthcare, college and certain other expenses.

Kerry spent the day in Colorado, preparing for Friday’s debate. Edwards, campaigning in West Palm Beach, Fla., responded to Bush’s speech by saying the president had “made clear” that he and his aides were “in denial about everything.”

“They’re in denial about the mess on the ground in Iraq. They’re in denial about their responsibility for Osama bin Laden still being at large. They’re in denial about the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs, who have lost their healthcare.”

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Times staff writers Matea Gold in Colorado and Michael Finnegan in Florida contributed to this report.