Kerry v Bush: The Facts, the Campaigns and the Spin...

Sen. John Kerry pulled a convention-eve surprise Sunday night, taking time out from his swing across the country to attend a baseball game in Boston between the Red Sox and their hated rivals, the New York Yankees.

He threw the first pitch to Will Pumyea, a Massachusetts National Guard soldier who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Kerry was continuing on to Florida after the game. He campaigned earlier in Ohio. Both are battleground states in the November election.

He will return to Boston on Wednesday afternoon, hours before he is formally nominated for president in the traditional state-by-state roll call vote.

On the eve of the Democratic convention, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of November battleground states released Sunday showed the race between President Bush and Kerry is too close to call in Florida, Ohio and Missouri. Together, the three states will cast 58 of the 270 electoral votes -- more than 20 percent -- that are needed to win the presidency. (Full story)

Amid extraordinary security, nearly 5,000 Democratic delegates and alternates have gathered in Boston for Monday's opening of the first national political convention since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. They are outnumbered 3-to-1 by members of the media. (Special Report: America Votes 2004, the Democratic convention)

Coast Guard boats are patrolling Boston Harbor. Manholes have been welded shut. Few, if any, mailboxes and trash cans are in sight. Interstate 93, the main artery through the city, will be closed during convention hours, and the Boston subway's North Station, a main commuter hub, will be shut down.

Because of those closures, the city has asked workers to stay home during convention week. ($60 million security plan)

Republicans are in town with a 30-member "truth squad" to provide a rapid response to podium speakers. They are borrowing the title of a popular television show to deride what they see as an attempt to repackage Kerry into something they believe he is not.

"I think the reason we're going up there is we're expecting an extreme makeover," Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Bush campaign, said on CNN's "Inside Politics Sunday."

"We want to make sure the American people understand that the John Kerry that may be speaking in the hall is stagecraft."
Richardson: Accentuate positive

Convention chairman Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, said Democrats planned to accentuate the positive and focus on Kerry's qualities, rather than bashing Bush for what they see as his shortcomings.

"We're going to talk about positive issues. We're not going to be bashing the president at every turn," Richardson said on "Fox News Sunday."

Organizers dodged potential embarrassment Sunday night when unions representing Boston police and firefighters called off plans to picket 29 welcoming parties for delegates.

Many Democratic officials had said they would not cross the picket lines to attend. Last month, Kerry refused to do so to address a mayor's conference in Boston, saying, "I don't cross picket lines. I never have."

The picketing was called off after firefighters reached a new contract agreement with the city earlier in the day. City officials also have reached a basic agreement with the police union but were still working on details.

Aug. 2 issue - John Kerry has never fit in easily. When NEWSWEEK asked about 30 of his 90-odd classmates at St. Paul's School to name his friends, they were stumped. Most confessed, after suggesting several different names, that they weren't quite sure whom Kerry hung out with. At Yale, Kerry always seemed to be on the move, going to meetings, changing clothes, never in one place long enough to really reveal himself.

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In the tribal world of Massachusetts pols, Kerry was routinely called a "preppy stiff" and "Live Shot" (for hogging the cameras). In the clubby Senate cloakroom, Kerry made an easy target. Late one Friday in 2002, as the senators were getting ready to leave town, several colleagues began razzing Kerry about his country-squire clothes, his pressed corduroys and tweed jacket. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware appeared wearing the same weekend outfit. "Why me?" protested Kerry. "Look at Biden! He's dressed the same way I am." "Yes, but your clothes cost four times as much," one of his tormentors remarked. About the only group that seems to accept Kerry is the fraternity of men who have been shot at in war, and even a few of them had trouble accepting his transformation into an antiwar leader.

In a recent interview with NEWSWEEK, Kerry protested that he's not really distant or remote. "There's nobody who travels with me on the bus or in this campaign who thinks that," he said. But then, in an earnest and slightly imploring manner, he went on to explain why he may have given off the impression of "brashness." In the interview, his manner was not stiff or lordly; if anything, he seemed humble, even vulnerable. Even so, his small, dark, deep-set eyes flashed reproachfully, as if to ask, why, after all his years of honorable public service, did he have to explain why he was unpopular in high school or is still the butt of jokes?


LIVE TALK | KERRY'S BATTLE OF EXPECTATIONS
Whether it's the vice presidential pick or the TV debates or the acceptance speech at the convention, Kerry needs to set?-and exceed?-what the rest of us think he's capable of. Join us on Friday, July 30, at 11:30 a.m. ET for a Live Talk with Richard Wolffe, who has been traveling with Kerry, on how the candidate is faring as the official Democratic presidential nominee.

Fair question. After all, Franklin Roosevelt was sneered at by his elite schoolboy peers for foppishness and egotism. Future greatness does not always inspire popularity. Coolness, in the high-school or hip sense of the word, is not a prerequisite for leadership.

And yet, in uncertain times, people want a leader who seems comfortable in his own skin, who has the presence that comes from deep and easy confidence?-who can hear the uncomplicated inner rhythms of common sense and sound judgment. At times, Kerry comes off as a little too sure of himself. He has been working on his political persona: smile more (but not too much!); don't ramble; go easy on the JFK Redux routine. Still, there is a posed, wooden quality about the public Kerry?-and sometimes, the private one, too. At times he looks like a stage set; an elegant facade concealing workmen who are still furiously toiling at some unseen project. Some of his closest friends say they don't know what he's really thinking. His distance and opaqueness can make voters uneasy

CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 23 - President Bush said on Monday that political advertisements run by a broad swath of independent groups should be stopped, including a television advertisement attacking Senator John Kerry's war record. But the White House quickly moved to insist that Mr. Bush had not meant in any way to single out the advertisement run by veterans opposed to Mr. Kerry. [..]

Asked on Monday about one of the anti-Kerry advertisements, financed largely by Texas supporters of Mr. Bush, the president said that he wanted to stop "all of them.''

"That means that ad, every other ad,'' he said. [..]

[But] His press secretary, Scott McClellan, said Mr. Bush had not intended to single out the Swift boat advertisement as one that should be stopped.

How is that a flip-flop?

Bush is anti-527s.