After weeks of slowly making up lost ground on his Democratic challenger, John Kerry, US President George Bush will reflect a more moderate, less strident image at the Republican National Convention which begins in New York today, writes Conor O'Clery in New York.
But the deep and bitter divisions in the US after four years of his presidency were evident on the streets of Manhattan yesterday where more than 250,000 people demonstrated against the President behind a banner saying, "The World Says No to the Bush Agenda".
Delegates arrived at the weekend in a jittery New York, with streets around the Madison Square Garden convention site guarded by National Guard soldiers.
Amid reports of a heightened terrorism alert, two men from Brooklyn were charged on Saturday with planning to bomb a subway station in mid-town Manhattan.
Demonstrations are planned for every day this week, and yesterday's march by United for Peace and Justice included almost 900 different groups protesting against the Iraq war and the Bush administration's domestic policies. Documentary maker Michael Moore told the marchers: "We are the majority in this country. The majority in this country opposes this war."
However, the latest poll, in Time magazine, shows Mr Bush with a 46 to 44 per cent lead over Senator Kerry, giving Republicans growing confidence that with a post-convention "bounce" they can go into the autumn campaign with a significant lead. Three other surveys last week gave the President a small lead over Mr Kerry, whose slight post convention gain has been eroded by attacks from Republicans on the senator's war record.
In an interview at the weekend, Mr Bush admitted that Mr Kerry's service was "more heroic" than his during Vietnam, noting that "he was in harm's way and I wasn't". However, he did not specifically condemn the anti-Kerry ads by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, despite evidence that their content is untrue, and First Lady Laura Bush commented in an interview, "Do I think they're unfair? Not really; there have been millions of terrible ads against my husband."
Mr Bush is making his way through battleground states before arriving in New York on Wednesday evening for his acceptance speech on Thursday.
He is putting the final touches to a speech expected to shift his campaign to the middle ground by dropping ideological content and emphasising that his next four years would focus on the economy.
A New York Times poll showed that most relatives of 9/11 victims believe the Republicans chose New York for their convention to capitalise on the emotions engendered by the al-Qaeda attacks. The President has scrapped plans to visit the Ground Zero site. New York's Republican mayor, Mr Michael Bloomberg, said: "I think that at this point it has become so politicised that he would be criticised more for going than not going."
Senator Kerry is at his home in Nantucket, Massachusetts, planning for the final two months of the presidential campaign.
"We've got 66 days to go, and I'm in a fighting mood," he said on Saturday in a campaign swing through Washington State. For the last four years, we've had a dark cloud over Washington," he said. "We're going to get rid of it on November 2nd."
With the prospect of victory seeming to slip from their grasp, Democrats are expected to step up their attacks on Mr Bush in the coming days. Yesterday New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton told NBC's Meet the Press that Mr Bush's re-election would be a "disaster" after four years of "unaccountable use of power" and a failed economic policy.