Kerry Prepares for Prime-Time Speech Tonight

By William Branigin

BOSTON, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, fresh from his official nomination to be the party’s standard-bearer in November, prepared Thursday to deliver the most important speech of his life, a prime-time address to the Democratic National Convention that aides said would seek to convey an image of strong leadership for troubled times.

Kerry, 60, who has served for most of the last two decades as the junior senator from Massachusetts, went to the FleetCenter shortly before noon to check out the podium from which he will address more than 4,000 convention delegates and a television audience of millions across the nation. Wearing an open-collared shirt and a blue blazer, Kerry tested the teleprompters and the microphone as he briefly went through the motions of delivering his speech.

Kerry had watched on television from his Beacon Hill home late Wednesday as the traditional roll call of state delegations officially gave him the nomination. Shortly before midnight, the delegation from Ohio, one of the key battleground states, put Kerry over the threshold of 2,162 votes needed to make him the nominee.

Kerry’s running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, is scheduled to be formally nominated by acclamation during Thursday’s session, a day after he rallied delegates with a generally well-received convention speech in which he promised that "hope is on the way."

Kerry campaign officials said that although the three major broadcast television networks have aired relatively little live coverage of the convention so far, the campaign is pleased by the response to the event from Americans using other media.

So far, the convention’s Web site has recorded "50 million hits," and Wednesday the campaign received $3 million in donations over the Internet, a one-day record, said Peggy Wilhide, the convention’s communications director.

The broadcast TV networks planned an hour of live reports Thursday night starting at 10 p.m. Eastern time to cover Kerry’s address.

Hours after his acceptance speech, Kerry and Edwards plan to set off on a coast-to-coast journey dubbed the "Believe in America Tour," traveling west by bus, train, boat and plane to battleground states. Campaign officials said the 3,500-mile trip beginning Friday morning would be reminiscent of the 1948 whistle-stop tour of president Harry S. Truman.

A campaign spokeswoman, Debra DeShong, said Kerry’s acceptance speech would "leave people with a sense that in very serious times, he has the strength to move the country forward." She said it would be "a very forceful, optimistic speech laying out his vision for a strong America." Kerry, she predicted, "is going to look presidential."

Also planned is the broadcast of a nine-minute documentary film on Kerry’s life that was directed by filmmaker James Moll with advice from renowned director Steven Spielberg. The documentary, narrated by actor Morgan Freeman, features members of Kerry’s family and fellow Vietnam veteran Jim Rassman, a Green Beret whom Kerry rescued from a river in Vietnam under enemy fire in March 1969.

Rassman, 57, a retired sheriff’s deputy from Oregon who had been a registered Republican for more than 30 years, is among those scheduled to address the convention before Kerry is introduced by Max Cleland, a former U.S. senator from George who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam. Appearing on the stage with Rassman will be 13 of Kerry’s former crew mates from two Navy Swift boats he commanded during the war.

Asked why the campaign was putting so much emphasis on Kerry’s service in the Vietnam War more than three decades ago — a war that he subsequently opposed — DeShong told reporters Thursday, "Because that’s a tremendous part of who John Kerry is." She said the emphasis was on "service to country that began in Vietnam."

DeShong was also asked how the campaign plans to deal with a GOP strategy aimed in part at preventing Republicans who are disenchanted with President Bush from straying all the way into the Kerry camp by making the Democrat appear unacceptable.

"Part of that starts tonight," DeShong said. "We’re going to capture the attention of America, and breaking down that firewall begins tonight in a major way. That comfort level that we need to reach with voters is really going to begin this evening when John Kerry speaks from the heart."

As the preparations proceeded, Boston police were bracing for possible demonstrations on the convention’s final day after three days of unexpected calm. So far, only two people have been reported arrested by police guarding the convention site, one a man who was apparently intoxicated and the other a woman who drove through a checkpoint.

The Associated Press reported that about 100 protesters from a group calling itself Critical Mass rode bicycles through the city Thursday as police tried to keep up on their own bikes. It was not immediately clear what the group was protesting.

In addition, a Boston-area group of anarchists called for "decentralized direct action" Thursday.

In one of the state delegations’ final breakfast meetings Thursday morning, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney told Maryland delegates that organized labor would help defeat a president he called an enemy of workers, Washington Post staff writer Tim Craig reported.

Sweeney, a Maryland delegate from Montgomery County, told state party leaders and activists that he couldn’t be happier with Kerry’s efforts to reach out to organized labor.

"This week, we now feel we are really a full part of the national Democratic Party because John Kerry has gone out of his way to make it that way," Sweeney told the crowd of 150 Maryland Democrats.

Later he said, "Our current president in the White House is simply the worst president in our history. He is the biggest enemy of our workers and their unions, and we’re going to beat that son of Bush."

The appearance was a warm-up for Sweeney, who is scheduled to address the convention at 7:45 p.m. He said he plans to build on Edwards’s speech Wednesday night that sought to reach out to working-class voters. Sweeney will be joined on stage by Stephen White, a Silver Spring man who the AFL-CIO says was fired from Comcast recently because he tried to form a union.

Maryland Democratic leaders said Edwards’s "hope is on the way" message gives them a powerful tool to use when they get home to try to boost Kerry’s candidacy.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen told the delegation that his young son, Alexander, recalled the slogan as the two were stuck in traffic after the session adjourned.

"My son said, ’Don’t worry, tomorrow will be a better day because hope is on the way,’" Van Hollen told the crowd. "So you know if my 8-year-old son who was half asleep got it, the rest of America got it."

And while many Democrats have steered cleared of harsh attacks on Bush inside the convention hall, the speakers at the Maryland delegation’s breakfast were far less restrained.

"Without question, the Bush administration has failed," said Rep. Albert R. Wynn (D-Md.). "We have a leg up . . . but we got to make sure we go out and beat this chump. We got to win this election."

Soo Lee-Cho, 32, a delegate from Rockville attending her first convention, said she was ready to work for the Democratic ticket. "It has motivated me like never before," she said.

But with most Democrats confident Kerry will win heavily-Democratic Maryland, state activists are planning to work for the Democratic ticket in neighboring states that are expected to be more competitive, including Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia.

The Maryland Young Democrats have announced they are sending 200 of their members to campaign for Kerry in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, on Sept 11 and 12.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24771-2004Jul29.html