US: The US presidential race has tightened again. President Bush, while still ahead, has lost some of the bounce he got during the Republican Convention last week, according to the latest polls.
Conor O'Clery,
The Bush campaign has been put on the defensive by new charges that he shirked his National Guard duty in 1972 and lied about it.
The campaign rhetoric has also heated up, with former vice-president Al Gore describing Vice-President Dick Cheney's warning that "the wrong choice" by voters could result in another terrorist attack, as "a sleazy and despicable effort to blackmail voters with fear".
Senator John Kerry's wife, Ms Teresa Heinz Kerry, caused some controversy yesterday when she said in an interview that "only an idiot" would fail to support her husband's healthcare plan.
One week after the Republican Convention, Mr Bush holds a seven-point lead (49-42 per cent) over the Democratic candidate, Mr Kerry, according to a CBS poll. In August Mr Kerry led Mr Bush by 46 to 45 per cent in the same poll. Last weekend polls in Time and Newsweek, taken at the height of the convention, put Mr Bush 11 points ahead.
The Rasmussen daily tracking poll yesterday put Mr Bush ahead by almost two percentage points, 48-46. A Gallup poll also showed Mr Bush holding clear leads over Mr Kerry in the key battlegrounds states of Missouri and Ohio, and tied in Pennsylvania, a swing state important to Democratic chances for victory.
A nationwide poll by ICR conducted over September 1st-5th shows a dead heat at 46 per cent each for Mr Bush and Mr Kerry with 4 per cent for independent Mr Ralph Nader, who is not competing in every state.
Democrats pounced yesterday on the latest revelations about Mr Bush's Texas Air National Guard service, including a claim by former Democratic Texas house speaker Ben Barnes that he helped Mr Bush get into the guard as a privileged member of the Texas elite seeking to avoid being sent to Vietnam.
Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, recalling Mr Bush's claims that he had fulfilled his guard obligations, said: "Either George Bush was deliberately lying to the American public or he had some type of severe memory loss."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the new claims were "the same old recycled attacks that we see every time the President is up for election", and part of a co-ordinated effort by Democrats to attack the President when ahead in the polls.
CBS produced memos that, if authentic, are embarrassing to Mr Bush, who signed up in the Air National Guard in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War and last year donned his pilot's uniform to proclaim "Mission Accomplished" after the invasion of Iraq.
Col Jerry Killian, Mr Bush's squadron commander, recounted in a memo dated May 19th, 1972, a phone call from Mr Bush asking for a transfer to Alabama for a political campaign and stated he may be "also talking to someone upstairs." On August 1st, Col Killian ordered Mr Bush suspended from flight status "due to failure to perform to USAF/TexANG standards and failure to meet annual physical examination (flight) as ordered".
He said Mr Bush "has made no attempt to meet his training certification or flight physical". The following month Mr Bush's request for a transfer to Alabama was approved, but a TV ad by Texans for Truth running this week quotes a retired guard officer Bob Mintz saying he never saw him at the unit there. In interviews however Mr Mintz conceded he could not be definite that Mr Bush was not there.
In Pennsylvania yesterday Mr Bush, who was twice heckled by protesters, compared scepticism about US goals in Iraq with doubts about US efforts in Japan after the second World War.
"Today Japan is an ally when it comes to keeping the peace," he said. "Someday an American president will be sitting down with a duly-elected leader of Iraq, and they're going to be talking about the peace, and they're going to look back in history, and say, thank goodness America never forgot the power of liberty to change lives."
The remark by Mr Cheney, that "the wrong choice" by voters could result in another terrorist attack, has been assailed widely in the media. The New York Times called it a "disgraceful".