Focus on Security Leaves President Vulnerable Despite Rise in Polls, Strategists Say
President Bush has risen in polls after taking the calculated risk to elevate security issues over pocketbook concerns in the campaign's home stretch. But strategists in both parties said that approach leaves him with acute vulnerabilities in case of an economic shock, a terrorist attack or heavy attention to a bloody October in Iraq.
Administration officials disclosed plans yesterday that show the many ways Bush will try to emphasize his role as commander in chief. He will interrupt his swing-state travel in just over a week to go before cameras at the United Nations with the interim president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai. Two days later, Bush will welcome Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, to the Rose Garden.
The week after that is the scheduled start of the campaign debates. Bush's negotiators plan to insist that the first debate, to be devoted to domestic issues, will include homeland security, according to outside presidential advisers.
The exposure for Bush was clear as security spiraled out of control in Baghdad yesterday, with insurgents shelling the heart of the city with mortar and rocket barrages just days after U.S. military deaths in Iraq passed 1,000 and the Pentagon admitted that rebels control swaths of central Iraq. With violence flaring in urban areas last month, the United States suffered its highest combat injury toll for any month since the war began.
more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16750-2004Sep12.html