Kerry chills Bush bashing

BOSTON — Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry is working to tamp down the amount of Bush bashing at his party’s nominating convention, which kicks off here today.

Mr. Kerry’s staff is examining convention speakers’ remarks to make sure that they stay mostly positive. It will be a clear break from the primary season, when bashing President Bush dominated debates and speeches, and will signify the beginning of Mr. Kerry’s general election message.

“Everybody knows about George Bush; that’s why his approval ratings are in the 40s,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe. “They want to know about John Kerry.”

Although Mr. McAuliffe said he hadn’t seen any speeches other than his own, Kerry campaign staffers gave guidance to convention speakers beforehand and are editing many speeches.

“It’s the normal speechwriting process,” said Kerry campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter, although she said the president will still take his lumps. “You will hear about Bush.”

About 5,000 convention delegates and alternates, 15,000 guests and dignitaries, and 15,000 members of the press have arrived for Boston’s first national nominating convention.

Mr. Kerry, who was supposed to be avoiding Boston until his Thursday acceptance speech, made a surprise visit to Fenway Park to catch the Boston Red Sox-New York Yankees game last night — a move designed to add some electricity to what has become one of the most scripted events in American politics.

“It’s a wonderful rivalry. The idea of missing a Yankees-Red Sox series right before a convention is unacceptable. So we changed the policy,” Mr. Kerry told reporters traveling with him as he announced that the plane was no longer going to Florida.

There was some campaign business yesterday — although it would affect 2008, rather than this year. Democratic officials voted to set up a commission to study whether Iowa should keep its position as the first caucus, followed a little more than a week later by New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary.

Several jurisdictions, including Michigan and the District of Columbia, have protested those two small states’ dominance in selecting the parties’ nominees. This year, the District held a nonbinding primary a week before Iowa’s caucuses, which former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean won. Mr. Kerry, however, won the District’s official caucuses weeks later.

Mr. McAuliffe said yesterday that the Democratic Party is “in the best shape we have ever been in our history.”

“At the end of the 2000 election, I think a lot of people said this party is dead, in serious trouble. I think after 2002, some people wrote that again,” he said. “This is the comeback party. From where we were after the 2000 debacle, the 2000 election, we are a new party today — we are more energized, coordinated, unified than we have ever been.”

He also claimed victory for Democrats for surviving the past few months, when President Bush began to attack Mr. Kerry in ads and on the campaign trail.

The convention is stacked with speakers who represent the Democratic base, including prominent black, Hispanic and homosexual officeholders and labor union leaders.

But Mr. McAuliffe said those speakers will be delivering a message that reaches out to swing voters.

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