ABC News' The Note: First Source for Political News

ByABC News
August 20, 2004, 10:07 AM

W A S H I N G T O N, Aug. 20, 2004&#151;<br> -- NOTED NOW

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10 days until the Republican convention74 days until election day

NEWS SUMMARYPresident Bush: rest, write, read, plan, listen, meet, practice, watch, clear, ride.

Senator Kerry: travel, listen, seethe, plan, read, strum, ignore, shake, unpack, hire.

And for the staff of The Note, headed into the last quiet weekend, there are only three things:

1. Whither Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania?

2. Can we continue to publish with the help of only 500 of 1,000 Googling monkeys?

3. Today, who is more confident he will win 270+ electoral votes George W. Bush or John F. "W" Kerry?

Following one of the biggest days of his campaign since the convention, at least in terms of the volume of press coverage, Senator John Kerry stops in Charlotte, NC, this morning before making good on his plan to visit Florida following his post-convention tour, a plan that he cancelled after Charley came ashore.

Following two early morning Charlotte events a town hall meeting with unemployed workers at 8:15 am ET and a jobs creation speech at 9:00 am ET at Central Piedmont Community College Kerry flies to Ft. Myers, FL, where he'll meet home state Senator Bill Nelson for a tour of some of the areas hit hardest by Hurricane Charley.

Also in and around Ft. Myers? Gov. Jeb Bush, who's expected at the Charlotte Regional Medical Center in Punta Gorda in the early afternoon. Sorry to repeat the joke, but: watch the banks!

Everybody else stays down: President Bush at his Crawford ranch (engaged in convention prep), Vice President Cheney in Wyoming, and Senator John Edwards in Washington, DC.

And there are two new ads of Note: the second from the Swift Boat vets who oppose Kerry, and . . .

. . . the DNC also has a new TV ad to be announced today that we would describe as "timely."

According to our source, the ad is going up tomorrow in 21 states, with a focus on the commander-in-chief debate and it features retired General Merrill McPeak, saying something like, "As a fighter pilot, I saw my share of combat. As chief of staff, I led the Air Force during the first Gulf War. And four years ago, I endorsed George Bush for President. But this year, I'm voting for John Kerry."

And the DNC unveils its "America Can Do Better' bus tour leading up to the Republican National Convention.

Also today: both campaigns release their monthly and cumulative money totals Kerry's of course telling us how much he raised for the entire nomination season and the Labor Department releases the most recent state and regional unemployment figures.

The Democrats also will begin a new focus on new overtime rules, which go into effect on Monday, beginning tomorrow with Senator Edwards' Democratic address. While Kerry is in closed fundraisers on Long Island, NY, tomorrow, Edwards campaigns in West Virginia before heading to Charlotte, NC, for Sunday campaigning that will also include Milwaukee and Racine, WI.

On Sunday, "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" will have loads to talk about from Kerry economic adviser Gene Sperling and Rep. Rob Portman (R-OH) on the economy, to Iraq and Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Also on Sunday, be sure to tune in to C-SPAN for the first episode of an awesome series on Washington Journal examining battleground states. This one is about Missouri and guests include the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Jo Mannies, BC04 strategist Lloyd Smith, Missouri Lt. Gov. (and KE04 adviser) Joe Maxwell, and St. Louis radio talk show host Mike Sampson. And according to a release, "the program will include a series of short vignettes with volunteers and campaign aides from the Kerry and Bush campaigns . . . in both St. Louis and Kansas City." It's like New Hampshire and Iowa all over again!

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth:

The New York Times Kate Zernike and Jim Rutenberg furnish a careful must-read look at the formation of the group, along with charts and graphics galore. Roy Hoffmann seems to be the protagonist, and Jim O'Neill was instrumental in securing funds from Bob Perry and Harlan Crow, who he has known for years.

There's also an accounting of the Merrie Spaeth-Tex Lezar-GWB nexus, as well as the Perry-Rove nexus. All-in-all, nothing more suspicious than, say, Harold Ickes and Mary Beth Cahill being acquaintances either. An interesting twist: the ads themselves are crafted by Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, which has both a McCain and Bush 41 pedigree. LINK

While some of the connections the group makes read more like something from The Nation or Salon, the shots at some of the stories the members have told are bound to carry some weight with the Gang of 500 gatekeepers.

The key paragraphs:

In an unpublished interview in March 2003 with Mr. Kerry's authorized biographer, Douglas Brinkley, provided by Mr. Brinkley to The New York Times , Roy F. Hoffmann, a retired rear admiral and a leader of the group, allowed that he had disagreed with Mr. Kerry's antiwar positions but said, 'I am not going to say anything negative about him.' He added, 'He's a good man.'"

"Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush's top political aide, recently said through a spokeswoman that he and Mr. Perry were longtime friends, though he said they had not spoken for at least a year. Mr. Rove and Mr. Perry have been associates since at least 1986, when they both worked on the gubernatorial campaign of Bill Clements."

"When asked if she had ever visited the White House during Mr. Bush's tenure, Ms. Spaeth initially said that she had been there only once, in 2002, when Kenneth Starr gave her a personal tour. But this week Ms. Spaeth acknowledged that she had spent an hour in the Old Executive Office Building, part of the White House complex, in the spring of 2003, giving Mr. Bush's chief economic adviser, Stephen Friedman, public speaking advice."

"The group also offers the account of William L. Schachte Jr., a retired rear admiral who says in the book that he had been on the small skimmer on which Mr. Kerry was injured that night in December 1968. He contends that Mr. Kerry wounded himself while firing a grenade."

"But the two other men who acknowledged that they had been with Mr. Kerry, Bill Zaladonis and Mr. Runyon, say they cannot recall a third crew member. "Me and Bill aren't the smartest, but we can count to three," Mr. Runyon said in an interview. And even Dr. Letson said he had not recalled Mr. Schachte until he had a conversation with another veteran earlier this year and received a subsequent phone call from Mr. Schachte himself."

As we wait for Ad Two (which may well be about Kerry's post-war comments) . . . chew over these questions:

Will Senator Kerry address the (what strikes us as mostly meaningless) Cambodia question?

Or wait for Brinkley to do so in The New Yorker?

How much free media will the new SBVfT ad get?

Will other veterans emerge to contradict Senator Kerry or fortify his claims?

Does Michael Meehan ever get asked questions raised by this blog? LINK

Or Hugh Hewitt's? (LINK)

What does Joe Lockhart say in the morning meetings about whether to release Senator Kerry's full medical record?

Does the story peter out on its own over the weekend, or does the now opened-can of worms continue to bear well, worms?Does a focus on Kerry's credibility (even as it relates to Vietnam) really help Kerry in the long run? Is this the reason for the equivocal BC04 response to the simple question about whether President Bush thinks the allegations themselves are true?

The Los Angeles Times has this nugget: Stephanie "Cutter said that if charges about Kerry's service continued, the candidate would 'talk comparatively' about his military record and that of Bush, who has been shadowed by questions about whether he fulfilled his service while in the Texas Air National Guard."

Ms. Cutter confirmed this sentiment to The Note this very morning.

ABC News' Jake Tapper reported today on "Good Morning America": "In addition to the involvement of Perry, other GOP donors, and former Reagan White House media liaison Merrie Spaeth, O'Neill told ABC News that when his group was forming, he sought and received free legal advice from Jan Baran, an expert on election law who was the former counsel for George H.W. Bush's 1988 presidential campaign, and for four years counsel to the Republican National Committee." LINK

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: Kerry pushback:

In describing the Senator's pushback, Deb Orin writes John Kerry "went ballistic." LINK

The Los Angeles Times' news of day story is chock-full, including the Lockhart and Johnson hires, but our favorite is this three-graph tick tock. LINK

"Kerry reversed course Wednesday night after arriving in Boston from a campaign trip to Cincinnati. As his motorcade pulled up to his Beacon Hill townhouse, he asked senior adviser David Morehouse, communications director Stephanie Cutter and press secretary David Wade to come inside."

"With campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill on the phone, Kerry told his aides, 'I think it's time to go at this.'"

"Aides hired a delivery service to drive through the night from Washington, D.C., to Boston with thick, bound copies of Kerry's naval records to distribute to reporters traveling with the candidate."

From the Wall Street Journal 's Washington Wire: "Though Kerry hit back yesterday at a Bush 'front' attacking his military service, one outside Democratic strategist says failure to do that days ago evokes "a bad case of Dukakis déjà vu." Bush aides say they aren't involved. Kerry beefs up communications team with former Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart."

"Some Vietnam crewmates of Kerry's urged him over the last week to personally condemn the swift boat ads, a task he left until yesterday to spokesmen and friends like McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam. But according to aides, Kerry was particularly incensed Wednesday when he heard reports that Bush donor Perry had written a second $100,000 check to continue financing the group and stayed up late that night writing eight new paragraphs to insert into the speech," reports the Boston Globe 's Pat Healy. LINK

The New York Times ' Jodi Wilgoren has her write up, including the CBS News poll. LINK