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The Morning Grind / DayAhead |
'Old Blue Tie' vs. 'Hair France'
By John Mercurio
CNN Political Unit
 |  New nicknames: John Kerry unveils a new campaign plane today, which reporters have dubbed "Hair France." President Bush picks up the moniker "Old Blue Tie" in a column in today's Washington Post. |
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 VIDEO |
 CNN's Kelly Wallace on Kerry and timing the nomination.
 CNN's Soledad O'Brien gets Joe Biden's take on the Bush speech.
 CNN's John King breaks down President Bush's Iraq policy speech.
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It wasn't exactly "Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall." But President Bush's call to raze Abu Ghraib prison led the news from a speech that, judging from early reviews, did little to improve his sagging poll numbers or change the dynamics of another bad week. For him, that is.
While Bush travels today to battleground Ohio for a health care roundtable, his campaign will focus on improving those poll numbers when it launches a new TV ad in 19 states that attacks John Kerry on the Patriot Act.
Bush/Cheney has scheduled a conference call for 11 a.m. ET with former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, campaign manager Ken Mehlman and chief strategist Matthew Dowd to preview the spot.
Kerry, meanwhile, heads west in a spiffy new, state-of-the-art campaign plane, which reporters have called "Hair France" or "Air Force One in Waiting" (more on this below).
He continues a strategy that, while curious, seems to be working -- he ignores the story-of-the-day to focus on pre-set weekly themes. He'll discuss energy independence at a bus depot in Portland, Oregon. (Also in Portland today: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, speaking to the Portland Rotary Club).
"When gas prices hit $2 a gallon, we don't just pay for it at the pump -- we pay for it in our towns and our schools and our grocery stores," Kerry is expected to say, according to an advance copy of his 4 p.m. ET speech. "High gas prices are the last thing that parents and teachers and school committees should have to worry about. ... Communities like Portland deserve more than a choice between filling their classrooms with textbooks and teachers and filling their school buses with gas."
Camp Kerry has scheduled surrogate events on gas/oil prices in key states. In Las Vegas, Nevada, party activists will protest Bush's energy policy at an event at 1:15 p.m. ET. In Missouri, Lt. Gov. Joe Maxwell and Senate candidate Nancy Farmer will hold a news conference at 3:00 p.m. at a gas station in south St. Louis.
'Hair France'
Back to "Hair France," which Kerry will unveil today at a 9 a.m. rally at Reagan Washington National Airport.
The white Boeing 757 is painted with a John Kerry logo on the front section and a "Real Deal" logo on the engine. It features a front cabin for Kerry et al., a separate section for traveling aides, a media holding pen in the back and, we hear, a stand-up bar. Swank.
And just in time for the senator and his wife to celebrate their ninth wedding anniversary on Saturday. (Charter trivia: The Associated Press reports that Kerry shared one of his most recent chartered planes with Fleetwood Mac).
'Old Blue Tie'
Bush, or "Old Blue Tie" as Tom Shales called him in today's Washington Post, said the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, notorious for torture under Saddam Hussein and now for prisoner abuse by U.S. troops, will be destroyed "as a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning."
"Under the dictator, prisons like Abu Ghraib were symbols of death and torture," Bush said during the 33-minute address, delivered at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the Army's highest-level educational institution, which has published studies criticizing Bush's Iraq policy. "That same prison became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values."
In a statement, Kerry said that Bush "laid out general principles tonight, most of which we've heard before." He added: "What's most important now is to turn these words into action by offering presidential leadership to the nation and to the world."
Bush left open the critical question of who would take over power in Iraq on June 30. A U.N. envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, is expected to announce that in the coming days.
V.P. tea leaves
Dick Gephardt, one of Ralph Nader's top picks to be Kerry's running mate, appeared last night at a Leon Panetta Lecture Series event in Monterrey, California. Reacting to Bush's speech, Gephardt said, "He said tonight that he would do whatever his generals asked him to do. That's not to me proper presidential leadership." He praised Bush's effort to motivate people, but said, "What I think is missing, is asking the American people -- Franklin Roosevelt did in World War II, Winston Churchill did of the British people in World War II -- to dig down and do what we have to do, to sacrifice something to try to make this thing work."
At the forum, Gephardt was asked whether John McCain would be a potential Kerry running mate. He said McCain is a "very attractive figure in American politics" and "would be accepted by the Democratic Party." Gephardt said McCain is a "very bipartisan figure" and is "someone a lot of Democrats could get interested in."
