CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — John Kerry stood beside legendary astronauts here yesterday and promised to improve health care for all Americans through scientific and technological advancements under his administration.
“We need to modernize our health care system and push the boundaries of medical exploration,” Mr. Kerry said, highlighting America’s “sense of discovery and innovation” at a town-hall style event. “We can use technology and the promise to strengthen our health care system and help millions of Americans.”
Former Democratic Sen. John Glenn, a one-time astronaut from Ohio stumping for Mr. Kerry, said the space program should be permitted to conduct more experiments in space.
“There is a lot of competition all around the world,” he said. “You don’t win it by hanging back.”
“I want to see that the leader of the world continues to be the leader of the world in space and in science and technology,” Mr. Glenn said.
Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who briefly ran for the 2004 presidential nomination, hosted the event at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and promised that Mr. Kerry would win Florida’s 27 electoral votes “when all the votes are counted.”
Mr. Graham, introduced by Mr. Kerry as one of his party’s leading experts on intelligence matters, warned the Florida voters gathered here of grave consequences if President Bush is re-elected.
A woman in the audience said she’d recently returned from a trip to Australia, where she’d encountered a sign on a boat that said: “Improve world order. Kill an American today.” She wondered how such sentiments could be erased.
“I think what that boat sign in Australia was about was not about America, but was about George W. Bush,” Mr. Graham said. “The people of the world are giving us a path. They’re saying ’We still like America; we don’t like the current leadership of America.’”
He blamed President Bush’s handling of the war on terror, saying, “We have erected a giant billboard recruiting for al Qaeda on the main street of virtually every city in the Middle East and Central Asia.”
If America ratifies Mr. Bush’s policies by re-electing him, “we no longer can escape that censure that you saw on the boat in Australia,” Mr. Graham said. “We will have become part of the actions which have brought our country into such disrepute.”
The campaign also released a poll yesterday conducted by pollster Mark Mellman.
Among voters nationally, 60 percent say the economy was better under former President Bill Clinton, while just 27 percent say it is better today, according to the poll. Also, 78 percent of voters say they plan to watch part of this week’s Democratic convention, while 68 percent said they would watch the Republican convention.
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