Kerry, Bush on the Road Again

SCRANTON, Pa. —  President Bush and his Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry, sparred over performance and campaign promises Friday as the two candidates blazed a path across some of the election’s most hotly contested states.

Kerry, seeking to build on momentum coming out of the Democratic National Convention, vowed to expand health coverage as the first order of his administration. That pledge was part of a renewed effort by the Massachusetts senator and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, to cast their domestic agenda as more attentive than Bush’s to the everyday needs of the middle class.

“People are struggling, but the people at the top keep getting taken care of,” Kerry told more than 10,000 supporters who filled several blocks of downtown Scranton to cheer the Democratic ticket.

Kerry castigated Bush for the 4 million Americans he said had lost health coverage over the last four years, and pledged to start reversing that trend with legislation he would propose on his first day in office.

“We’re sending to Congress a bill that will end America’s shame of being the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn’t understand healthcare is not a privilege for the wealthy and the connected and the elected,” he said, reprising part of his speech to the convention.

Bush, ending a week of self-imposed exile at his Texas ranch, unveiled a retooled campaign speech Friday, citing his accomplishments in the White House while saying Kerry had done little during his 19 years in the Senate.

“Results matter,” Bush said. On issue after issue -- including the economy and efforts to fight terrorism -- the president vowed: “We are turning the corner, and we’re not turning back.”

Kerry’s “prescription for America is the wrong medicine,” Bush told a crowd of 8,000 supporters in a college baseball stadium in Springfield, Mo. “Give me four more years and America will continue to march toward peace and better prosperity.”

He described his vision of “a new era of ownership and opportunity” and offered a variation on his justification for the war with Iraq, citing the recent suggestion by the Sept. 11 commission that the attacks occurred, in part, due to “a failure of imagination.”

“After Sept. 11, we could not fail to imagine that a brutal tyrant who hated America, who had ties to terror, had used weapons of mass destruction and might use those weapons or share his deadly capability with terrorists was not a threat,” Bush said.

With the candidates motoring through the battleground states -- Kerry and Edwards set out by bus Friday on the first leg of a two-week journey -- the presidential TV advertising slugfest resumed after a lull during the convention.

The spots by the Bush campaign and the Democratic National Committee, which is taking up the ad-buying slack to help Kerry save his money for later, focused on terrorism; it was a signal that there would be no let-up by the candidates to out-tough each other.

The 30-second Democratic ad included footage from Kerry’s Thursday night speech in Boston, in which he recounted his Vietnam War service and told terrorists: “You will lose, and we will win.” The spot is set to begin running today on nationwide cable TV and local stations in 20 states, excluding California.

The Bush campaign, meanwhile, posted an ad on its website that included stark images of a tank and a gunman in urban street combat, along with a boy holding a teddy bear and families in bucolic settings. Bush and his wife, Laura, stand on a porch and smile while a narrator discusses the values of “family, faith and the freedom we celebrate.”

Bush then declares, “Together, we’re moving America forward.” A campaign spokesman said the 30-second spot would start airing on cable channels and local TV stations next week.

Coming off the convention in Kerry’s hometown of Boston, the Democratic candidates began their day just a few hours after the last one ended, appearing before 1,000 cheering supporters in a park on Boston’s waterfront. With the Mystic River and a twin-masted whaling schooner as an early-morning backdrop, Kerry reached out to the swing voters who will likely decide the election, saying his campaign was “not about Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative. It’s about mainstream values that define our nation. It’s about American values.”

The senator also reprised another of his lines from his Thursday night acceptance speech, saying he and Edwards would “restore trust and credibility to the White House.” Banners proclaimed “Believe in America,” the theme of Kerry’s 3,500-mile tour and the slogan emblazoned on several of his 10 blue touring buses.

The motorcade rumbled through Massachusetts, Connecticut and upstate New York en route to Pennsylvania. With Secret Service, network news and others joining in, the caravan of 25 vehicles strung out over nearly half a mile of interstate. By early afternoon, the procession was an hour behind schedule.

Kerry and Edwards, traveling with their wives, stopped for lunch in Newburgh, N.Y., population 28,000. In keeping with the Edwards’ wedding anniversary tradition, they ate at Wendy’s. “I’m treating,” Kerry told his running mate, as they entered the restaurant to a round of applause.

As the candidates’ buses lagged, Kerry phoned ahead to address the sweltering crowd in Scranton, where paramedics said hundreds of people left after waiting for hours in heat and high humidity. More than 100 people at the event were treated for heat exposure, and about 30 were taken to local hospitals.

The Democratic candidates wrapped up their day at a rally of roughly 15,000 supporters at the state capital of Harrisburg.

Bush’s appearances in Missouri, Michigan and Ohio were meant to try to seize back at least a portion of the public spotlight that Kerry and Edwards have enjoyed for the better part of the month.

The president seemed energized to be back out campaigning. In his speech at Southwest Missouri State University, Bush praised Vice President Dick Cheney for his “sound judgment” and extensive national security experience -- even if, Bush quipped, he was not “the prettiest man in the race.”

Bush watched some of the Democratic convention from his ranch near Crawford, Texas, according to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, but did not stay up Thursday night to watch Kerry’s speech. He read accounts of his address in the morning newspapers, McClellan said.

Bush dismissed what he characterized as “a lot of clever speeches and some big promises” in Boston, suggesting that even good intentions “do not always transfer into results.”

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Finnegan reported from Scranton and Chen from Springfield, Mo. Times staff writers Nick Anderson, Mark Z. Barabak and James Rainey contributed to this report.