Dialing Toward November
The war of words between Al Gore and George W. Bush's camps over those recorded phone calls to Michigan voters attacking the GOP presidential hopeful rages on.
"I do think that Governor Bush's record in Texas is the best indicator that the American people have about what kind of president he would be. And it's a terrible record," said Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, Gore's running mate, on CBS News' Face The Nation on Sunday.
Appearing on the same program, Bush's chief strategist Karl Rove said of Democrat Gore's team: "That just is unbelievable that that campaign would allow those kinds of tactics to go forward and its principals would shake it off so lightly."
Thousands of Michigan residents are receiving the recorded messages paid for by the Democrats, though apparently not by the Gore campaign directly.
In one call, Charlotte Cherry of Houston says, "Governor Bush has accepted $1.3 million from corporate polluters and he's allowed them to keep polluting while my kids suffer."
In another, Ann Friday of Arlington, Texas, says her husband died after neglect in a nursing home four years ago - and that Bush has signed legislation that has weakened rather than strengthened nursing home regulations.
And in a call that's no longer being used, actor Ed Asner says, "George W. Bush has a proposal that would undermine Social Security, even scuttling current benefits."
The Michigan Democratic Coordinated Campaign paid to have the calls by Cherry and Friday recorded and sent automatically to Michigan voters' phones, said spokesman Chad Clanton.
The Asner call was sent out by the Democratic National Committee and Michigan Democratic Party.
On Face The Nation, Lieberman said that while he hadn't heard any of the calls himself, he said that "they seem to me to be factual."
"Am I saying that George Bush killed people? Of course not," Lieberman added. "But I'm saying there are consequences when you don't clean up the air, when you don't protect nursing home patients, when you don't give health care coverage to kids - which is the Texas record in all those records."
Rove said Bush has signed stiffer nursing home regulations into law during his three legislative sessions as Texas governor - and then tore into the Democratic ticket.
"Al Gore and Joe Lieberman should not be held responsible for the deaths of 2500 people due to negligence and mistreatment in nursing homes regulated by federal law no more than Governor Bush should be held responsible in this instance."
As the presidential race enters its final week, Gore and Bush remain locked in the tightest contest in four decades. Of particular concern to the Democrats is Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, who's siphoning support away from Gore in a handful of states that the vice president must win. On Face The Nation, Lieberman appealed to the Naderites.
"I ask thse who are thinking about voting for Ralph Nader to decide...how George Bush feels about protecting the environment, protecting consumers, protecting a woman's right to choose," said Lieberman, "because all of those may well be in jeopardy if George W. Bush is elected president."
Nader said on Sunday that he's not worried about taking votes from Gore and in effect handing Bush the keys to the White House.
On ABC's This Week, Nader said if Gore can't beat - in his words - "the bumbling Texas governor with that horrific record, what good is he?"
The consumer activist hammered home his message that there's really no difference between Gore and Bush or their political parties, since Democrats and Republicans are "morphing" into one corporate party - and that corporate interests are what run Washington.