Washington Wrap

Dotty Lynch, Douglas Kiker, Beth Lester and Clothilde Ewing of the CBS News Political Unit have the latest from the nation's capital.

Monday's Headlines

* Kerry Launches New Ads

* Bush Hits the Road

* New Web Site from Former Right-Wing Journalist Brock to Monitor Right-Wing Journalists

* Kerry Flies All Over the Place

Kerry's New Ads: After weeks of speculation, the Kerry campaign launched two new ads Monday. The ads are biographical in nature and both run for 60 seconds. According to a campaign press release, the "ads are backed by a significant, 19-state ad buy" for a whopping $25 million.

The ad was introduced at a press conference by campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill, senior advisers Tad Devine and Mike Donilon and Kerry's Vietnam crewmates Del Sandusky (who makes a return appearance in the ad) and Drew Whitlow. Devine said, "It's unprecedented for a challenger to launch a campaign like this and I think in many ways it is unexpected by our opponents. I think the Bush campaign has made some fundamental strategic mistakes over the course of the last several months. ... I think they assumed that this 1996 and that the incumbent president would be able to define and destroy his challenger by an extensive paid media campaign. That assumption was based on a wrong assumption on their part that we would not have the means to respond."

The ads will run in the standard 17 battleground states (AZ, AR, FL, IA, ME, MI, MN, MO, NV, NH, NM, OH, OR, PA, WA, WV, WI) plus Louisiana and Colorado, where Kerry's campaign hopes to do better than expected. The new ads will run through May 27 and compliment Kerry's current Iraq-focused ad.

The second ad,

Travels with George: President Bush starts a two-day, two-swing state bus tour on Monday dubbed "Yes, America Can" that will highlight what the Bush-Cheney campaign calls "the strength, optimism and resolve of the American people in meeting the tests of our time – strengthening the economy, making our communities better and keeping America safe."

The AP reports, "Election Day is six months off, but President Bush is campaigning with the urgency of a politician in the home stretch, barnstorming across the battlegrounds of Michigan and Ohio by bus Monday and Tuesday."

Bush kicks off the tour in Niles, Mich., with an "Ask President Bush" event at an area high school. But before the Kerry campaign starts sending planted question-askers, the AP says only people who've benefited from Bush's tax cuts will be allowed to ask questions. Bush then travels to Kalamazoo, Mich., where he'll make remarks, and Sterling, Mich., where he'll attend a campaign rally.

On Tuesday, Bush travels across Ohio, beginning with breakfast remarks in Toledo, followed by another "Ask President Bush" session in Dayton, remarks in Lebanon and a rally in Cincinnati. He flies back to Washington on Tuesday night.

"Bush lost both the primary and general election in Michigan in 2000, and is determined not to allow a repeat. Monday marks his 13th visit to the state as president. Yet voters remain about equally split in their preference for Bush or Kerry. In a Michigan poll last month, 47 percent said they favored Kerry, while 45 percent preferred the president, with 8 percent undecided," the AP reports.

Ohio, of course, is a state famously important to Republican presidential candidates: None has ever won the presidency without carrying the state. Bush has visited Ohio 16 times as president, a clear sign of the importance the state will hold in November.

The AP reports: "On Friday, the president embarks on a similar bus tour through Iowa and Wisconsin, two other fiercely competitive states that he lost by a combined 11,000 votes in 2000."

The DNC will try to take some of the limelight from Bush by holding local events dubbed "Mission Not Accomplished" to highlight what Democrats say are Bush's failures on the economy and homeland security.

Bush's bus trip comes a week after his rival, John Kerry, took a bust trip through four battleground states: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

David Brock's Transformation Continues: The New York Times reports: "David Brock, the former right-wing journalist turned liberal, describes himself as once having been a rather large cog in the machinery of the conservative media. Now Mr. Brock is starting a new endeavor built to combat the very sector of journalism that spawned him, with support from the same sorts of people (Democrats) about whom he once wrote so critically. With more than $2 million in donations from wealthy liberals, Mr. Brock will start a new Internet site this week that he says will monitor the conservative media and correct erroneous assertions in real time."

The Times reports that the site, called Media Matters, "was devised as part of a larger media apparatus being built by liberals to combat what they say is the overwhelming influence of conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly. R. Brock's project was developed with help from the newly formed Center for American Progress, the policy group headed by John D. Podesta, the former Clinton chief of staff.

"The project is yet another considerable step in his public evolution from conservative muckraker to liberal activist. That evolution began after Mr. Brock began publicly apologizing in the late 1990's for reporting that brutally criticized Anita F. Hill and a report that Arkansas state troopers had helped Bill Clinton procure paramours when he was the governor of Arkansas, the veracity of which he is no longer sure. Mr. Brock has also said that he knowingly lied in an article he wrote for The American Spectator in 1992 that raised doubts about the credibility of Ms. Hill. The article formed the basis for a later book about Ms. Hill, whose charges of harassment almost derailed Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court.

"The right wing in this country has dominated the debate over liberal bias,"Brock told The Times. "By dominating that debate, my belief is they've moved the media itself to the right and therefore they've moved American politics to the right."

Kerry Flies All Over the Place: Although most campaigns run on a tightly scripted timetable, the Kerry campaign seems to be taking a slightly more fluid approach to scheduling the candidate's time. CBS News' Steve Chaggaris reports Kerry was originally supposed to spend the weekend in Boston and then return to Washington, D.C., on Monday to speak to the Anti Defamation League. But on Tuesday, his schedule changed, and then kept changing all week.

By Sunday, Kerry's travel looked like this: 6am baggage call; 7:30am arrival at National Airport; 9:07am departure for the flight to Bedford, MA; arrival in Bedford at 10:30am.

On the flight: 33 people (Kerry, two staffers and 3 guests plus 13 Secret Service agents and 14 journalists).

In the middle of the flight, Chaggaris reports, Kerry decided he did not want to stay in Boston on Sunday night after all. Instead, he wanted to fly back to D.C. for a meeting with VP vetter Jim Johnson. However, rain forced a delay on the tarmac in Boston and the Johnson meeting didn't happen until Monday morning.

As for why Kerry HAD to go to Boston, he told reporters, "I've got a bunch of stuff I've got to do ... Just never get home." The stuff included a bike ride (during which Kerry skinned his knee), lunch and going through paperwork. "I have an office full of paper that has to be processed," he said. As for the "just never get home" comment, he was in Boston for two nights last weekend.

So to recap, Kerry rounded up a charter flight – with staff, Secret Service and reporters – early on a Sunday morning for a flight from D.C. to Boston, only to return to D.C. late the same day because he had paperwork to go through, take a bike ride and eat lunch. At $1-2 a gallon for airplane fuel on a 3,200-gallon trip, that was sure an expensive lunch. Perhaps that's why Kerry campaign has asked Warren Buffet to join its economics team, as the Boston Globe reports.

Quote of the Day: "It's still there, exactly as I created it. I could have franchised it across the country...I could have been Mr. Kerry instead of Mrs. Fields." --John Kerry, on the cookie store he started in Boston's Fanueil Market. (Wall Street Journal).