18 October 2004

Bush, Kerry spar over vaccines, qualifications

XENIA, Ohio -- Democratic challenger John F. Kerry accused President Bush yesterday of "Twilight Zone-ish" deceptions over the shortage of 48 million flu vaccinations as the rivals challenged each other's qualifications for the presidency while campaigning in states that will be two of the most important prizes on Election Day -- Ohio and Florida.

With the nation facing the worst undersupply ever as the flu season nears, Kerry made a lawyerly case before 2,500 Ohioans that the Bush administration was warned in 2001, in 2003, and last August about potential vaccine shortages and quality problems, suggesting that the current vaccine crisis could have been avoided if the administration had heeded those warnings.

Meanwhile, Bush told thousands of Floridians that Kerry's vote against $87 billion in funds for war efforts a year ago today demonstrated that his rival was unfit to be commander in chief.

Bush made the attack as Kerry was describing the president's reaction to the discovery that much of the nation's flu vaccine supply is contaminated as something out of the surreal sci-fi program, particularly what he termed Bush's "bizarre" proposal to turn for help to Canada in light of the US ban on importing lower-priced drugs from that country.

"Just like with Iraq, just like with the economy, a top administration official is now saying that even with the benefit of hindsight, the administration wouldn't have done anything differently," Kerry said to the exuberant partisan audience.

"Folks, you've got to scratch your head and say, you know, this guy is never in doubt but frequently in error. You know what they do? It's just business as usual with George W. Bush: Ignore it, deny it, try to hide it, and then say you'd have done everything the same way."

Promising to take responsibility for his mistakes as John F. Kennedy did after the botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, Kerry added: "In our administration, we're not going to blame everybody else and look for excuses. I'm going to get that Harry Truman sign back out -- the buck stops here -- right on that desk."

Bush, at the final debate between the presidential candidates Wednesday, blamed a British laboratory for the contamination but did not mention the warnings, and said his administration was "allocating" the existing vaccines for the most vulnerable.

"My call to our fellow Americans is, if you're healthy, if you're younger, don't get a flu shot this year," Bush said, adding he will not seek one.

Kerry will not get a flu shot either, an aide said.

The US General Accounting Office warned in 2001 of a possible shortage if any one of the three manufacturers of flu vaccines experiences a delay or shortfall. Two years later, federal health regulators identified quality-control problems at one of the three, a British vaccine-maker that produced half of the US flu immunization supply.

Last summer, administration officials were informed of the coming shortage, and this month British authorities shut down the facility because of tainted vaccines.

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Republican's reelection campaign, suggested yesterday that Kerry was partly to blame for the flu shortage, noting he opposed a bill in 2003 that would have aided the immunization industry by limiting their liability and punitive damages if users become ill.

"He will say anything he thinks will benefit him, no matter how hypocritical or inconsistent with the facts," Schmidt said.

With two new magazine polls indicating a tight race between Kerry and Bush, similar to surveys in Ohio and Florida -- which respectively offer 20 and 27 electoral votes -- the two campaigns were rewriting speeches to exploit any advantage of the moment. For Kerry, it was dramatic newspaper headlines about the flu and lost jobs, which he held up and read aloud to stir voter anger; for Bush, it was the first anniversary of Kerry's vote against a bill allocating $87 billion for US war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As he did in the recent debates, Bush mocked Kerry for having said of his vote a year ago today, "I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it." He accused the Democrat of abandoning troops in combat last fall because former Vermont governor Howard Dean was gaining ground at the time as an antiwar candidate for their party's nomination.

"My opponent's many and conflicting positions on this issue are a case study into why his contradictions call into question his credibility and his ability to lead our nation," Bush said at a rally in a suburb of Fort Lauderdale.

"At a time of great threat to our country, at a time of challenge in the world, the commander in chief must stand on principle, not the shifting sands of political convenience."

Kerry has acknowledged a poor choice of words on the matter, saying he ultimately opposed the spending after Republicans in Congress refused to pay for it without increasing the budget deficit.

"If the president wants to talk about the past year, we're glad to have that debate," Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer said, noting it was a year ago yesterday that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's wrote, in a memo that was leaked to the media, that Iraq risked becoming a "long, hard slog."

The sharp exchanges came in the wake of a new Washington Post poll indicating that Bush and Kerry are locked in a dead heat in Florida, where a 537-vote margin delivered the presidency to Bush four years ago after the protracted and bitter recount battle.

Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, said Bush was doing better in Florida than the Post poll indicated.

"I feel good about it," Rove said, noting that the president had drawn a large and boisterous crowd in Broward County, an area where he pulled less than a third of the vote in 2000. "I talked to one of our Bush county chairs and he said he's never seen this level of energy and enthusiasm for a presidential candidate."

He added that Bush's stance against former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who fled that country amid a rebellion and allegations of corruption and was replaced by a US-backed interim government, had helped Haitian-Americans in Florida "make a very strong turn in our direction" in recent months.

"Our object is to take this Bush coalition and expand it, to grow it by getting our share of the undecideds, by taking away some of the soft Kerry supporters, and by keeping the level of energy and enthusiasm among our supporters high so that they get out on Election Day," Rove said. "Turnout will matter."

Reflecting the importance of winning Florida again, Bush also tweaked his stump speech to deliver a special message to Jewish voters, who make up a high-turnout constituency among the retirement condominium communities of South Florida.

"Extending freedom means confronting the evil of anti-Semitism," Bush said, announcing he had signed the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004, a law that authorizes the government to track anti-Semitic acts and responses to those acts throughout the world. "This nation will keep watch and make sure the ancient impulse of anti-Semitism never finds a home in the modern world."

Kerry's invitation-only town hall meeting in Xenia was also aimed at energizing voters, particularly those whose families have been hit by job losses.

The candidate was introduced by a Mike Adams, a young man laid off from his manufacturing job, whose voice smoldered with anger as he repeated Bush's remark at Wednesday's debate that workers had "more money in your pockets as a result of the tax relief that we passed and [Kerry] opposed."

"I've had to cash out my retirement fund so that I can apply to community college and pay the household bills before the creditors come and take what I have," Adams said. "Personally I'd like him to tell me where that money is now!"

By Patrick Healy and Charlie Savage,
Boston Globe Staff

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