Bush shifts to more aggressive campaign

3.00pm

WASHINGTON - President George W Bush's re-election team says Bush is shifting his campaign into a more aggressive mode to take on critics after weeks of Democratic attacks that have contributed to slumping approval ratings.

The shift comes as many Republicans fret that Bush has been on the defensive all year over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and a US economic recovery that has failed to generate a lot of job growth in some November battleground states like Ohio and Michigan.

The first move will be a new, more confrontational stump speech to be given by the president on Monday night to the Republican Governors Association. It will lay out many of the themes to be debated over the next eight months.

The speech, without mentioning opponents' names, will mark "a new period of engagement for the president and a tactical shift for the campaign," Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman said in a telephone interview.

The speech will "point out there is a very clear choice particularly on the two major issues in this campaign, the forward momentum of economic recovery and how we can keep America safe in a world where there are terrorists who seek to do us harm," Mehlman said.

The campaign on Monday will also call key television markets nationwide to begin buying advertising time for the first barrage of Bush ads.

The ads to offer a positive vision of Bush's leadership will be run in strategic areas and nationally on cable television. They will begin airing March 4, two days after the Democrats' "Super Tuesday" primaries when Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts stands to cement his grip on the Democratic presidential nomination.

The ads will be the first television buys for the campaign that has so far raised a record US$143.6 million ($212.4 million) and has about US$104 million on hand.

The Bush campaign will also dispatch surrogates to states where Democratic candidates are campaigning to respond directly to criticism.

The campaign had predicted Bush would be down in the polls during the Democratic primary campaign and believes the country is as divided now as it was in 2000 when Bush defeated Al Gore after a bitter Florida recount battle.

A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll of likely voters last week said 55 per cent would support Democrat John Kerry to 43 per cent for Bush, and 54 per cent would support Democrat John Edwards to 44 per cent for Bush.

The White House and campaign officials blame months of Democratic attacks in the campaign run-up as a key factor in Bush's poor showing and are confident his numbers will pick up once the battle is joined in earnest.

"This will be welcome because it's time for Bush to raise the stakes of this election," said Republican strategist Scott Reed. "There's no need to panic, but there is an outcry around the country from Bush supporters that it's time to rumble."

He said Ralph Nader's entry into the race as an independent could help Bush. Nader ran in 2000 and took votes away from the Democrat Gore.

"Republicans around the country are welcoming Ralph Nader into this race," Reed said.

Democrats have accused Bush of a "credibility gap" over the Iraq war by the failure to find the promised unconventional weapons and say his tax cuts have failed to generate jobs.

They also accused him of being AWOL from his National Guard service in 1972 during the Vietnam War.

- REUTERS