Kerry revamps campaign team after poll slide
Presidential election challenger John Kerry is shaking up his campaign team after a disastrous month which severely dented his White House dreams.
The Massachusetts Senator saw his small lead destroyed and he slipped 11 points behind President George Bush in polls at the end of last week.
Such a gap could prove impossible to close with less than two months to go before Americans cast their votes.
The rapid change in fortunes led to a weekend pep talk from Bill Clinton, who spoke to Mr Kerry from his hospital bed where he was awaiting heart surgery.
Mr Kerry has decided to appoint to his campaign a number of former key aides to Mr Clinton. And his team is expected to take a stronger stance against Mr Bush in the remaining weeks of the race.
Political pundits believe that unanswered attacks on Mr Kerry’s Vietnam record were responsible for the rapid decline in his popularity.
And last week at the Republican National Convention, Mr Kerry was painted as weak on defence and inconsistent on other policies.
A breakaway member of his own Democratic Party, Zell Miller, even suggested that Mr Kerry was so opposed to new weaponry for the armed forces that US troops would have to defend themselves with “spitballs” under a Kerry administration.
According to reports, Mr Kerry lashed out at campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill over the failure to react faster to claims by a group of anti-Kerry Vietnam veterans called Swift Boat Veterans For Truth.
They have alleged that Mr Kerry did not deserve his five war medals, torched a village and shot a fleeing teenaged Viet Cong in the back.
The group has published a book and launched television and radio adverts, funded by a wealthy Republican donor from Mr Bush’s home state of Texas.
Mr Kerry spoke to former President Clinton, in hospital in New York, for 90 minutes on Saturday evening.
Mr Clinton urged Mr Kerry to stop focusing on his Vietnam record, which has been a cornerstone of his campaign.
Instead the Kerry campaign should shift to domestic issues such jobs and healthcare.
Mr Clinton also told Mr Kerry to ratchet up attacks on his opponent.
The conversation came after Mr Kerry phoned Mr Clinton, who is at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, to wish him well ahead of heart bypass surgery.
A number of former Clinton aides pressed for weeks for Mr Kerry to respond more forcefully to the attacks by Swift Boat Veterans For Truth.
But it took two weeks for Mr Kerry to respond, and denounce the adverts.
In the meantime the Republicans hosted their convention in New York City and launched wave upon wave of attacks on the Senator.
The tone of the Republican Convention was sharply different from the Democrats’ gathering in Boston in July, in which the party deliberately steered away from personal attacks on Mr Bush or his vice president Dick Cheney.
