Kerry drafts in Clinton aides

By RUPERT CORNWELL

Trailing in the polls and facing criticism among Democrats for his lacklustre performance, John Kerry kicked off the final stage of the presidential campaign yesterday with visits to three swing states, a new speech and a shake-up of his staff.

Encouraged by many supporters - not least former President Bill Clinton - the Massachusetts senator will reportedly give important roles to architects of the Clinton victories in 1992 and 1996, among them strategist James Carville of Little Rock "war room" fame, and the pollster Stanley Greenberg.

Kerry is also bringing in John Sasso, a trusted friend from Massachusetts politics and manager of Michael Dukakis' losing 1988 White House bid, as his top travelling adviser.

Kerry "told Sasso that he wants to put the choice before the American people in very clear, simple language, that he feels that hasn't been happening ... nearly as much as it needs to", an unnamed senior adviser told the Boston Globe.

Most Democrats feel the shake-up is long overdue. But there is a risk that two competing groups could form - one consisting of the team that guided him through the primaries, led by campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill and political adviser Bob Shrum, the other of the Clinton advisers.

The changes came as two separate polls, in Time and Newsweek magazines, both gave George Bush an 11-point advantage.

The lead is the biggest established by either candidate this year, and suggests that the President achieved a real "bounce" from last week's Republican convention - unlike Kerry who made no significant gain from his convention in Boston a month earlier.

If precedent is anything to go by, Bush is in a strong position leading up to the November 2 election.

Only once has an incumbent who has led at this stage lost the election - Jimmy Carter who, in 1980, faded badly in the closing weeks and was ultimately defeated in a Ronald Reagan landslide.

Kerry spoke lengthily by phone over the weekend with Clinton. It is understood Clinton's main advice was for Kerry to get off the subject of Vietnam and shift the argument from national security to domestic issues such as the economy and healthcare where Bush is more vulnerable - highlighting how money spent in Iraq could have been far better spent at home.

If so, the point has quickly been taken. In campaign stops in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, the Democratic challenger wheeled out a new speech, lambasting Bush for the loss of jobs during his Administration, and the rising number of Americans without healthcare cover.

Even then, however, at one meeting in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, national security issues dominated. Iraq was "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time", Kerry said, under questioning from the audience.

"I would not have done one thing differently, I would have done everything differently."

He repeated his promise to internationalise the Iraq effort, branding Bush's claim that a coalition was fighting alongside the US as "the phoniest thing I've ever heard".

Bush accused Kerry of vacillating on Iraq.

"After voting for the war but against funding it, after saying he would have voted for the war even knowing everything we know today, my opponent woke up this morning with new campaign advisers and yet another new position," Bush said.

At a Labour Day rally in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, another swing state, Bush touted his proposal to overhaul the tax code, as well as recent stronger employment figures. He said the federal tax code favoured special interests and was too complicated.

"Sitting down to do your taxes shouldn't require wading through more than one million words worth of complicated rules and regulations."

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS