Trail Bytes

The Latest From CBS News Reporters Covering The Presidential Race

(CBS)  As the presidential race heads into the home stretch, CBS News reporters are out on the road traveling with the Bush-Cheney and Kerry-Edwards campaigns.

Read their dispatches and keep up with the latest campaign news in Trail Bytes, updated daily on CBSNews.com

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PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

It's as if the president is doing yesterday in reverse. He campaigns today in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania before returning to the White House.

Those were his exact political targets yesterday only backwards.

By retracing his steps and campaigning in the same states, Mr. Bush is putting his strategy on public display. There's no way around it.

He has one rally each in Michigan and Pennsylvania and two in Ohio. He lost the first two states in 2000 but won the third. It's critical he win Ohio, but if he didn't one of the other two would help cover the loss in electoral votes.

He'll use his speeches today to invite comparisons with John Kerry on the issue of leadership. A spokesman says Mr. Bush will portray himself as decisive and consistent while casting Kerry as given to flip-flops based on political expediency.

Like yesterday, the president will again be reaching out aggressively to Democrats, an acknowledgement that he cannot win re-election with just the votes of Republicans.

Pitching Democrats

The president used both the soft and hard sell in asking Democrats for their votes yesterday. Declaring himself a proud Republican, he said he believes his policies "appeal to many Democrats."

"In fact, I believe my opponent is running away from some of the great traditions of the Democrat Party. If you're a Democrat and you want America to be strong and confident in our ideals, I'd be honored to have your vote."

The president charged that John Kerry has betrayed what he called the Democratic Party's "great tradition of leading this country with strength and conviction in times of war and crisis."

"I think of Franklin Roosevelt's commitment to total victory. I think of Harry Truman's clear vision at the beginning of the Cold War. I think of John Kennedy's brave declaration of American ideals."

"Many Democrats look at my opponent and wonder where that great tradition of their party has gone."

"If you are a Democrat who wants America to lead with strength and idealism, I would be honored to have your vote."

"On the big issues of our country's security, victory in the war against terror, improving our public schools, respecting marriage and human life, I hope people who usually vote for the other party will take a close look at my agenda. If you're a Democrat, and your dreams and goals are not found in the far left wing of the Democrat Party, I'd be honored to have your vote. And next Tuesday, I ask you stand with me."

The president was accompanied on yesterday's three-state, four-rally trip by one of the leading Bush Democrats, U.S. Sen Zell Miller of Georgia. He introduced Mr. Bush at his two Ohio rallies.

Breaking His Silence

For two days this week, the president chose not to say a public word about the report of missing Iraqi high explosives. John Kerry taunted Mr. Bush about it, claiming it was another sign of the incompetence with which the president managed the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

With pent-up ferocity yesterday, Mr. Bush fired back. He mocked Kerry, saying that he "seemed shocked to learn that Iraq was a dangerous place, full of dangerous weapons."

"Now, the Senator is making wild charges about missing explosives, when his top foreign policy advisor admits, quote, "We do not know the facts."

Mr. Bush said "that's part of a pattern" of Kerry "saying almost anything to get elected."

"A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander-in-chief."

The president offered no explanation for what happened to the explosives but said the matter was under investigation by the U.S. military.

He said there are a number of scenarios that could explain the disappearance, "including that the explosives may have been moved before our troops even arrived at the site."

Mr Bush tried to portray Kerry as disloyal to U.S. military personnel for suggesting they didn't act swiftly enough to secure the explosives before they went missing.

"Think about that. The senator is denigrating the action of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts."

The president also made the case the the U.S. had "seized or destroyed more than 400,000 tons of munitions, including explosives, at thousands of different sites." And Mr. Bush argued that even missing explosives are better than the alternative.

"I want to remind the American people, if Senator Kerry had his way, we would still be taking our global test, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, he would control all those weapons and explosives, and could have shared them with our terrorist enemies."

What Does It Mean?

So now both major presidential candidates accuse each other of exceptionally bad judgment making them unfit to be commander-in-chief.

The disturbing question facing voters is: what if they're both right.
--Mark Knoller


SEN. JOHN KERRY, D-MASS.

Last night, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series for the first time since 1918 and Kerry, who has been a lifelong Sox fan, expressed his excitement in a post-game printed statement.

"I've been rooting for this day since I was a kid," said Kerry. "I couldn't be more thrilled for the team and for all the fans who stuck by the Red Sox year after year after year. This Red Sox team came back against all odds and showed America what heart is."

Now, add the fact that the longstanding "Curse of the Bambino" - the jinx that Boston fans assumed was the cause of the team's years of futility - has been broken 5 days before the election to another long-suffering Massachusetts sports team, the New England Patriots, winning their second Super Bowl 5 days after Kerry won the New Hampshire primary earlier this year and the superstitious are wondering if this will affect the curse on Massachusetts presidential candidates.

Of course, the one common thread among the two world champions and the wannabe "leader of the free world" is that they all call Massachusetts home, a state that, since JFK, has had its share high-profile failed presidential candidates (Ted Kennedy and Mike Dukakis, who lost to George W. Bush's father in 1988).

In August, Kerry didn't want to hedge his bets saying, "If I had a choice between the White House and the World Series this year, I'm going to take the White House."

However, earlier this month, when it looked like the Sox had a chance of going deep into the playoffs, he revised his outlook. "In two ways this could be the year," he said in Austintown, Ohio on October 3. "We can win the World Series and we could win the presidency and we're going to do both."

Speaking of Ohio, Kerry caught the end of the World Series - and held a rally this morning - in Toledo before he meets up with Bruce Springsteen in Madison, Wisconsin this afternoon. The two will then fly to Columbus, Ohio later today for another rally.

As Kerry gets closer to election day, details of his upcoming schedule are being kept very quiet, perhaps because the campaign isn't even sure of what he's doing after tomorrow.

While he'll spend Friday in Florida and begin Saturday in Wisconsin, after that, the details are sketchy. There's talk of more Ohio on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning and the campaign has already announced that Springsteen will rejoin Kerry on Monday night in Cleveland. Rumors of a non-stop 72-hour marathon of campaigning have all but been quashed, though the new rumor is that he'll campaign almost through the middle of the night on election eve.

All of this hard work could be getting to Kerry as he inadvertently became the pot that called the kettle black yesterday. A popular new riff that Kerry uses at his rallies is when he ridicules President Bush for repeating during the first debate that being president is "hard work. It's hard work. It's hard work."

"I am ready and I am impatient to relieve this president of the hard work," exclaimes Kerry to wild applause every time he says it.

However, yesterday, Kerry made an unscheduled stop at a Sioux City, Iowa elementary school where he chatted with about 100 kids, ages 5-10. One asked him what it was like running for president.

Seemingly inadvertently, he sounded just like the president in his response telling the kid, "It's hard work. Everything you do in public life is hard work."
--Steve Chaggaris


SEN. JOHN EDWARDS, D-N.C.

With five days until Election Day, Edwards has campaigning down to a science. The marathon candidate held three rallies in the state of Florida Wednesday, where he delivered nearly word for word the same stump speech, altering it only to throw in local flavor and to slip in comments on the news of the hour.

But he's not just riding a wave, campaign officials maintain. Spokesman Mark Kornblau noted Edwards is "on the offensive as much as any of the other three principles" as he responds to the president and vice president on an "hour by hour" basis.

At his event in Clearwater, Edwards blasted the president for attempting to make inroads with Ohio Democrats on the campaign trail by "invoking the names of great Democrats and comparing himself to people like Roosevelt and Truman and Kennedy." Edwards received cheers when he told the partisan crowd, "Those are Democratic presidents who led with a powerful combination, a combination of strength and hope. George Bush's combination is fear and failure."

After declaring Bush's record one "that a man like Herbert Hoover would be ashamed of," Edwards admonished the president of talking to Democrats "for the first time six days before the election."

He charged, "Just because you stand with Zel Miller and campaign in Democratic counties, it doesn't make him a friend of Democrats. It shows a sign of desperation."

Despite the latest polls that give President Bush a slight lead in Florida, the Edwards campaign is predicting the state will swing to the blue column. But Florida senator Bill Nelson, who traveled with Edwards through the state Friday warned Clearwater voters, "Every indication is that it's a close race, so get prepared for shenanigans."

Talking to Edwards' traveling press corps, Nelson said his "greatest fear" was that poll watchers, who have been given the authority to question the credentials of voters on site, will slow the process down and cause long lines as a result, discouraging voters from going to the polls.

When asked if he thought America would know the winner on November the 3rd, Nelson responded, "I'm praying that it's over because we don't need to go through what we went through four years ago." Edwards will be back in Florida over the weekend.
--Bonney Kapp


VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY

Vice President Cheney almost always closes his remarks by complimenting the president on four years of a job well done and then gives a tip of the hat to the U.S. military. In doing so in Wilmington, Ohio, on Monday, though, he may have opened himself to criticism from the Democrats.

While talking about Iraq, Cheney said, “I think it has been a remarkable success story to date when you look at what has been accomplished overall and I think the president deserves credit for it.”

Don’t be surprised if Senators Kerry or Edwards takes exception to the phrase “remarkable success” as the campaign draws to a close.

Monday also saw Cheney introducing two new arguments against Kerry in his stump speech as he began the final full week of the 2004 election campaign. They were similar to the instant criticism Cheney has often delivered hours after a statement by his opponent. However, while his comments are usually well-crafted pointed attacks, the two debuted on Monday seemed duller than usual.

During opening statements at a town hall meeting in Moorhead, Minn., Cheney cited an article that appeared in Monday’s Washington Times that seemed to disprove a statement made by Kerry during the second presidential debate. According to the article, Kerry claimed to have met with members of the U.N. Security Council before casting his vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

“A reporter for The Washington Times in a story published just this morning decided to check on Senator Kerry’s meeting with the U.N. Security Council. He got hold of five ambassadors on the Security Council, and four of them said, they’d never met Senator Kerry,” Cheney told the crowd.

“And an official at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. remarked, we were as surprised as anyone when Senator Kerry starting talking about meeting with the Security Council. It didn’t happen,” he continued.

At this point, an audience member yelled out that this proved Kerry was a liar. Cheney laughed but made sure nobody misrepresented what was said. “Now the press is going to attribute that to me. It was that guy back there from North Dakota,” he joked.

But it was the second attack Cheney leveled where misrepresentation should have been an issue. The vice president attempted to paint Kerry with the “pre-9/11 mind set” brush by citing his now out-of-print book, "The New War," published in 1998.

“Anybody here read the book?” Cheney asked the crowd. “Well, not very many people have, I guess. But in it he talks about Yasser Arafat as a statesman and a role model. Now, I’ve never looked on Yasser Arafat quite in that light.”

Cheney continued, “He talks about the primary answer to terrorism being law enforcement. Now, law enforcement is a part of the answer. But if you think only law enforcement is the way to respond to terror, you’ve got a pre-9/11 mind set.”

Citing a book written before 9/11 and then accusing the author of having a “pre-9/11 mind set” may not be the strongest argument. But it was the reference to Arafat that drew criticism. A Democratic spokesperson quickly issued the statement, “The quotation marks around the term ‘role model’ are Kerry’s own. In no way did this book suggest that Kerry viewed Arafat as a role model. Of the word ‘statesman,’ there is little doubt that ‘role model’ was used in sarcastic terms."

The vice president spends the rest of the week moving west through critical battleground states. Tuesday will see him at several stops in Florida before heading toward Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada among others as the final campaign of his life draws to a close.
--Josh Gross