Road Trip!

John Kerry and President Bush kicked off a three-month sprint to the finish line on Friday. The newly crowned Democratic presidential nominee began a grueling, 3,500-mile cross-country trek through 21 states.

Mr. Bush, meanwhile, is campaigning by bus and plane in four key swing states: Missouri, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Kerry and his running mate, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, rolled out of Boston with actor Ben Affleck to start a two-week, 3,500-mile campaign on buses emblazoned with the words, "Believe in America." First stops, Scranton and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a state Mr. Bush lost by 5 percentage points in 2000.

"Americans are playing by the rules while a whole group of people are writing the rules for themselves and leaving the rest of America out. We're going to change that around. Help is on the way for the average person in this country," Kerry said, repeating a refrain from his acceptance speech.

The president was in Springfield, Mo., where he charged that Kerry lacked any "signature achievements" in his nearly 20-year Senate career.

"We have turned the corner and we're not turning back," Mr. Bush said. The president continued to portray the Massachusetts Democrat as a tax-and-spend politician liberal.

"My opponent has good intentions, but intentions do not always translate to results," the president told a cheering crowd here that packed a baseball stadium still soggy from an earlier rain.

Both men began the last three months of the campaign in a virtual deadlock, according to most polls. Kerry is expected to get a boost from the largely successful Democratic National Convention. But some political analysts believe that since many voters have already made up their minds, the convention "bounce" for Kerry won't be dramatic.

Kerry hit hard at the president's handling of the Iraq war and the war on terror in his acceptance speech Thursday night.

"Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn't make it so," Kerry told an overflowing Fleet Center crowd and a television audience of millions.

"And proclaiming mission accomplished certainly doesn't make it so," he said to roars of approval.

He only mentioned Mr. Bush once by name and won some of the biggest cheers from the partisan crowd by criticizing other administration officials - Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

"I will be a commander-in-chief, who will never mislead us into war," Kerry said. "I will have a vice president who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws.

Mr. Bush plans to give as good as he's been getting from the Democrats this week. The president is calling his latest campaign drive the "Heart and Soul of America" tour, a subtle jab at Kerry, who at a Democratic fund-raiser called some of his Hollywood friends the "heart and soul" of America.

During the next two weeks, Mr. Bush will focus on his domestic agenda. He'll talk about helping Americans adjust to a changing economy, increasing home ownership, overhauling Social Security and letting workers opt for time off as compensation, rather than overtime pay — an issue that has riled unions, Democrats and some moderate Republicans.

"I believe Congress ought to enact comp-time and flextime to help America's families better juggle the demands of work and their home," Mr. Bush said.

The president's remarks on the economy focused on his efforts to better educate and train tomorrow's work force. He didn't mention the Federal Reserve report released earlier this week that found economic conditions around the country worsened in June and early July — a signal that the economy was slowing in the early summer.

"When it comes to improving our economy and creating new jobs, results matter," Mr. Bush said. "When it comes to better securing our homeland and fighting the forces of terror, results matter."