Kerry Campaign Homes In on Threat of Bin Laden

Sen. John F. Kerry pledged Saturday to “destroy Osama bin Laden and the other terrorists” as he sought to keep the Al Qaeda leader’s new videotaped statement from disrupting his own closing pitch to voters in Tuesday’s presidential election.

The Democratic nominee faulted President Bush’s leadership of the hunt for Bin Laden and described the Iraq war as a poorly planned endeavor that has set back the fight against terrorism. To inspire trust in his ability to keep the country safe, Kerry campaigned with retired Adm. William J. Crowe, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Reagan.

But Kerry stressed his domestic agenda as he opened the final weekend of his White House quest with outdoor rallies in the autumn chill of the Upper Midwest.

“We need a president who not only defends America, but who also understands how to stand up for the middle class and for people struggling to get into the middle class,” he told supporters on a sloping lawn outside Iowa’s gold-domed Capitol in Des Moines.

Mocking the president for focusing his reelection bid so intensely on terrorism, Kerry said the nation needs “a president who can actually do more than one thing at the same time.”

At each stop, the Massachusetts senator tried to blunt Bush’s effort to cast him as a liberal who threatens higher taxes.

“I want everyone in Iowa to hear this: I will cut taxes for the middle class,” Kerry shouted in Des Moines, rattling off his proposed tax credits to subsidize college tuition, child care and health insurance.

Recalling former President Clinton’s success in decreasing the federal deficit, along with the millions of jobs created during Clinton’s tenure in the 1990s, he said: “That’s the America we want to go back to.”

At the rallies in Des Moines and here in eastern Ohio, rock star Jon Bon Jovi performed before the candidate bounded on stage in his mustard jacket. On Friday night, Bette Midler sang at a Kerry rally in Miami. And Bruce Springsteen, who has performed at Kerry events in three battleground states, is set to sing at one more rally Monday in Cleveland.

Still, the release of the Bin Laden videotape on Friday left the Kerry campaign scrambling to keep on track in the closing stretch of the race. To dampen speculation that it could tip the election to Bush, Kerry strategists urged reporters to make no assumptions on how the sudden reemergence of Bin Laden might influence voters.

“We ought to be a little bit cautious on what we think will be the consequences of these events,” Kerry pollster Stan Greenberg said.

Kerry and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards, told supporters at separate rallies Saturday that Democrats, Republicans and independents were united against terrorism. Beyond that, they stuck closely to lines they were using long before Bin Laden released his videotape.

“We will hunt you down, and we will hold you responsible for what you did on Sept. the 11th,” said Edwards, addressing the Al Qaeda leader directly from a picturesque town square in Marietta, Ohio.

In Appleton, Wis., Kerry questioned Bush’s handling of the battle to catch Bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan in late 2001.

Following Bush’s accusation that similar comments by Kerry on Friday were a “shameful” exploitation of the Bin Laden videotape, the Democrat stressed that he had made similar remarks since the early days of his campaign for the White House.

“As I have said for two years now, when Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, it was wrong to outsource the job of capturing them to Afghan warlords who a week earlier were fighting against us,” Kerry said.

Instead, he added, the Bush administration should have relied on U.S. troops “who wanted to avenge America for what happened in New York, in Pennsylvania and in Washington.”

With Bush portraying him as weak on defense, Kerry tried to reassure voters by invoking his combat service in Vietnam.

“I defended this country as a young man. I volunteered to fight for it then, and I will defend it as president of the United States of America,” he told roughly 1,000 supporters on an Appleton school field scattered with yellow leaves.

Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt dismissed Kerry’s remarks on Tora Bora as “false and baseless claims,” contradicted by military field commanders.

“Kerry’s Monday morning quarterbacking does not amount to a vision or plan to fight and win the war on terror,” he said.

At the rally in Appleton, a Republican-leaning area near Green Bay, hecklers offered a reminder of the challenge Kerry was facing in Wisconsin and Iowa -- two states that Bush barely lost in 2000 but where he has pushed hard this year for the support of culturally conservative voters.

Fewer than a dozen antiabortion protesters showed up, but they marred Kerry’s rally by bellowing through bullhorns: “Kerry repent!” and “Bush! Bush! Bush!” as the crowd chanted “Three more days! Three more days!”

Edwards began his day in the swing region of southeastern Ohio, on the day that the Marietta Times endorsed Bush.

Although he talked about Bin Laden, most of Edwards’ attention was spent addressing the basic concerns of Americans. Flanked by his parents, Wallace and Bobbie Edwards, a former mill worker and a former letter carrier, the North Carolina senator talked about his family’s humble beginnings.

He recalled coming upon his father working at the kitchen table while the television set glowed in the background. His father wasn’t doing paperwork, Edwards said, but learning math from a television program.

“I was sorry that my dad, who I love so much, didn’t have a college degree, but I was also hopeful,” said Edwards, who went on to law school and has been successful as a plaintiffs attorney.

“Because I knew I lived in a country where I could get one ... I have grown up in the bright light of America, but that light is flickering. George Bush doesn’t see it. Dick Cheney doesn’t see it. But you see it, don’t you? You see it because you’re living it every single day.”

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Times staff writer Maria L. La Ganga in Marietta, Ohio, contributed to this report.