US: During these last hectic days of the presidential election campaign, President Bush is not just battling against Senator John Kerry but against the news, writes Conor O'Clery in New York
Every morning there seems to be a "bad news" story that the Democratic challenger can seize upon to portray the Bush administration as incompetent or worse.
Yesterday it was the disclosure that the White House intends to seek possibly more than $70 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year. This would push total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion of Iraq early last year, according to the Washington Post.
Also yesterday Iraq's interim prime minister, Mr Iyad Allawi, accused US-led coalition forces of "great negligence" leading to the ambush that killed about 50 American-trained soldiers.
The previous day it was reported that US forces could not account for 380 tonnes of high explosive that could detonate nuclear weapons that had gone missing from an arms site in Iraq.
This was "incredible incompetence" that had put the lives of US soldiers at risk, fumed Mr Kerry, who raised the spectre yesterday of more bad news to come out, resulting from mistakes such as the failure to provide enough troops to secure Iraq after the invasion.
"Mr President, what else are you being silent about, what else are you keeping from the American people?" he asked at a Wisconsin rally.
Mr Bush did not address the issue of the missing explosives, but did respond yesterday to a frequent claim by Mr Kerry that Osama bin Laden had been allowed to escape when the administration "outsourced" the job of finding the al-Qaeda leader to Afghan warlords.
This was a "wild claim" as US intelligence did not know where the terrorist leader was, said Mr Bush, also speaking in Wisconsin. "It is unjustified criticism of the military commanders in the field. It is the worst kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking."
The drumbeat of bad news from Iraq, on top of the huge spike in petrol prices, the falling dollar and the poor performance of the stock markets, may help account for Mr Bush's slide in the polls in the last week.
A Los Angeles Times poll yesterday showed Mr Kerry level with Mr Bush at 48 per cent each, and the Washington Post tracking poll showed Mr Kerry ahead 48-49, a six-point improvement for the Massachusetts senator in 10 days. Zogby had Mr Bush ahead 49-46 per cent.
Interpreting the election surveys has become something of an obsession with partisan Americans, who "quiver with pre-election anxiety, their mood rising and collapsing with the merest flicker of the polls", as columnist David Brooks put it in yesterday's New York Times.
Many polls in 2000 had Mr Bush three points ahead before the election - in which Al Gore won the popular vote - and there is much speculation this time that they are again inaccurate because the pollsters do not reach people without home telephones.
Mr Bush defended his Iraq policies, admitting there were good days and bad days, but told supporters, "whether the polls are up or the polls are down, I am determined to win this war on terror".
A president must lead with consistency and strength, he said, adding, "In war, sometimes you change your tactics, but you never change your principles."
Accusing Mr Kerry of wanting to "cut and run", he said "the party of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and John Kennedy is rightly remembered for confidence and resolve in times of war and in hours of crisis (but) Senator Kerry has turned his back on 'pay any price' and 'bear any burden'."
The President also renewed his attacks on Mr Kerry as someone who "plans to raise your taxes", based on Mr Kerry's vow to cancel tax cuts for Americans earning more that $200,000 a year, which Mr Bush claimed would cripple small businesses that pay tax at the individual rate.
In an effort to broaden his appeal to undecided voters, Mr Bush told ABC television that he didn't oppose civil unions for same-sex couples, even though the Republican Party platform opposes them. The platform of his party was wrong, he said.
With six days before polling on November 2nd, Mr Kerry's strategy is now to present himself as the unavoidable alternate choice to an incompetent President incapable of recognising and dealing with his mistakes.
"When the President is faced with the consequences of his own bad decisions, he doesn't confront them, he tries to hide them," he said. "The truth is, President Bush isn't levelling with the American people about why we went to war, how the war is going, or what he is doing to put Iraq on track."
Mr Kerry campaigned in four states yesterday - Wisconsin, Nevada, New Mexico and Iowa - accompanied by rock singer Jon Bon Jovi. Tomorrow he will be backed by singer Bruce Springsteen in Wisconsin and Ohio.
Both campaigns threw surrogates into Florida, where Mr Kerry has moved slightly ahead in a state poll. In Miami former president Bill Clinton told a rally: "Remember, we won this state the last two times. They just didn't count 'em the last time. We can win it again. Let's go for three in a row."
Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said the former president had been recruited by Senator Kerry because he had failed to energise Democrats and hoped for "a little charisma transplant".
Vice President Dick Cheney held a rally in Palm Beach County and President Bush's twin daughters rallied women voters at Bush-Cheney headquarters in Miami.