The story's subhead on the NYT homepage: "Divisions have surfaced in the Kerry campaign over how best — and how far — they should go in taking on President Bush."
Bush and Kerry Step Up Attacks in Swing States
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DAVID M. HALBFINGER
Published: September 11, 2004
.... the more difficult question, officials say, is just how the Kerry campaign - even if Mr. Kerry does not take part directly - should go after Mr. Bush. Some of Mr. Kerry's closest friends and longtime political operatives from Boston, who have now set up shop at Democratic headquarters in Washington, are pressing for more, saying the campaign and the candidate must go on the offensive, to restore Mr. Kerry's own character as a political asset and to hold Mr. Bush accountable for attacks on Mr. Kerry.
These friends and former aides, led by David Thorne, a Yale classmate, fellow Navy veteran and brother of Mr. Kerry's first wife, are agitating for the candidate himself to answer what they called the character-assassination attacks of people like Vice President Cheney and members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. They are pushing for Mr. Kerry to make a dramatic statement of his own to settle voters' doubts about Mr. Kerry's Vietnam War period.
Officials in the campaign, however, including both longstanding consultants like Bob Shrum and new additions like Joe Lockhart and other veterans of the Clinton administration, have balked at such a move, saying it could be a disaster and alienate too many swing voters who would view such an approach as mean-spirited. They said Mr. Kerry would do better to concentrate on issues where he outperforms Mr. Bush in polls, like jobs and health care....
***
An example of the tug of war over whether and how to strike back at Mr. Bush came on Sept. 1, when the senator addressed a meeting of the American Legion in Nashville during the Republican convention. Some of his friends said they had hoped that Mr. Kerry would deliver an impassioned speech saying that Republican mockery of his Purple Heart awards was an insult to all veterans. The speech was drafted in part by former Senator Bob Kerrey, a Purple Heart winner in Vietnam himself, campaign advisers said....But the plan was thwarted by campaign officials who argued that Mr. Kerry would make himself a sitting duck for a savage counterattack on the Republican convention's final day....
***
While Mr. Kerry's longtime friends from Boston privately express frustration that they have been unable to get Mr. Kerry to stand up for himself more, one senior Kerry aide said obliquely that the campaign still planned to address the attacks on Mr. Kerry in a dramatic way....
(There's a lot more in the article re. campaign strategy.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/11/politics/campaign/11campaign.html
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