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Kerry launches campaign with full military honors

Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry buys frozen yogurt cones for campaign workers, supporters and passersby, in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday. Slipping in the polls and searching for a spark to ignite his White House bid, the US senator from Massachusetts formally launched his run for the Democratic nomination next year. PHOTO: REUTERS

Wrapping himself in the imagery of military service and the Vietnam War, Senator John Kerry portrayed his White House campaign on Tuesday as a mission "of courage," and berated President Bush as imposing a "radical new vision of a government" that he said favored the wealthy.

Kerry came to this waterside city to pose in front of an aircraft carrier and to deliver a formal campaign announcement speech that left no doubt about the extent to which he would bind his candidacy to his decorated service in Vietnam.

Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who had promised to use this speech to lay out a central argument for a campaign that many Democrats had said lacked focus, used the word "courage" 10 times in offering what his aides said would be an overarching theme for his candidacy.

"Every time that our country has faced great challenges, we have come through -- and we have come out stronger -- because courageous Americans have done what's right for America," he said on a sweltering morning before a largely listless crowd. "This is a time for the same kind of courage."

Still, for the most part, the speech represented a recapitulation of what he has been saying for much of the past nine months, although it came in front of the elaborate backdrop of the docked carrier Yorktown and in a place 1,600km from his Boston home.

"I reject George Bush's radical new vision of a government that comforts the comfortable at the expense of ordinary Americans, that lets corporations do as they please, that turns its back on the very alliances we helped to create and the very principles that have made our nation a model to the world for over two centuries," Kerry said.

The speech on Tuesday came at what is an awkward moment for Kerry's campaign, and represents what his own aides said was a relaunching of a ship that had drifted off course this summer. Kerry was caught by surprise by the vibrancy of the campaign of Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, who has eclipsed Kerry in fund-raising and in the early polls.

Campaign aides said there had been often explosive debate among his senior advisers about how tough Kerry should be in his speech in attacking Dean and in expressing his themes, and some expressed concern that the final product was too mild. One senior aide said the division could lead to upheaval in Kerry's staff.

Kerry set off speculation about the state of his campaign when, speaking to reporters after his speech, he suggested some dissatisfaction with his staff, and appeared to hold open the possibility that he might shake it up.

"I think they've done a spectacular job in a lot of things," Kerry said. "I think there are some things we could've done better."

An hour later, Kerry issued a statement expressing confidence in his aides, and declaring "there will be no changes" in his campaign structure.

With his speech on Tuesday, Kerry became the fifth of nine Democrats to formally say they are running for president.

Kerry did not mention Dean in his speech, the advice of some aides notwithstanding, but the former governor of Vermont clearly played into his remarks.

He also faulted Democrats who called for rolling back Bush's entire tax cut, a reference to Dean and Republican Dick Gephardt of Missouri. "Some in my own party want to get rid of all tax cuts, including those for working families," he said, adding: "That's wrong. The last time I looked, the problem in America was not that the middle class had too much money."

Kerry made a point of noting that he had voted for the resolution in Congress that had authorized Bush to attack Iraq; Dean opposed the war.

The announcement tour was extravagantly choreographed, and at times seemed more like a military rally than a political announcement.

There were eight American flags at his back, and he appeared with eight veterans who, he reminded the crowd, served with him in Vietnam, including on a patrol boat in the Mekong Delta. It took him only two sentences in his prepared remarks before he made his first reference to his service in Vietnam.
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