Clinton joins Kerry on campaign trail

PHILADELPHIA – The ruddy face has paled and thinned. The hands seem longer and waxen. But… PHILADELPHIA – The ruddy face has paled and thinned. The hands seem longer and waxen. But Bill Clinton, with his telltale voice, eager grin and pensive overbite, emerged from his post-surgery convalescence Monday to put his shoulder to Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign.

It was the first campaign appearance for the former president since his quadruple-bypass heart surgery left Democrats without one of their most potent political weapons. Notoriously garrulous, Clinton spoke for only eight and a half minutes in an appearance meant to sway undecided voters and energize core Democrats.

“In Pennsylvania alone you’ve lost 70,000 jobs,” he told a crowd in Philadelphia. “This compared with the 219,000 you gained by this time when that last fella was president: me.”

The Kerry camp was eager to present Clinton as the embodiment of Democratic good times, a reminder of the economic boom of the 1990s. The embrace from Kerry was a stark contrast to the 2000 campaign, when Vice President Al Gore, worried that Clinton’s sexual scandals could taint him, held the president at arm’s length.

“It takes a lot to keep President Clinton from the campaign trail,” Kerry said, marveling that Clinton was on the stump only seven weeks after his surgery. “This president is the comeback kid, and America loves you for it.”

The joint appearance came as Kerry leveled one of his harshest denunciations of President Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq. A day after accusing Bush of trying to scare Americans into voting for the Republican ticket, Kerry used news accounts of a looted stockpile of Iraqi explosives to warn that Bush’s re-election would pose a menace to American troops and U.S. security.

“The incredible incompetence of this president and this administration has put our troops at risk and put this country at greater risk than we ought to be,” Kerry said at a rally in Dover, N.H. “The unbelievable blindness, stubbornness, arrogance of this administration to do the basics has now allowed this president to once again fail the test of being a commander in chief.”

The New York Times reported Monday that nearly 380 tons of powerful explosives had disappeared from a former Iraqi military installation that’s now abandoned and unsecured, despite warnings from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Bush campaign dismissed Kerry’s critique as “Monday morning quarterbacking and armchair-generaling.”

“The entire country of Iraq was a weapons stockpile,” Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt said. “So far, 243,000 tons of weapons and explosives have been secured and destroyed. In addition, 163,000 tons of weapons and explosives have been secured and are awaiting destruction.”

Clinton made little reference to Iraq, focusing on the economic conditions that he said Kerry would improve.

“Their plan is more of the same,” he said. “They gave two huge tax cuts to upper-income people like me and to special interests, they’ve run these big deficits … and they’re saddling it on our children. John Kerry’s got a better plan.”

He praised Kerry’s campaign, recalling days during the Democratic primary contest when Democrats had given Kerry up for dead and even this summer when many Democrats despaired that Kerry was letting Bush get the best of him.

In September, just days before his surgery, Clinton himself called Kerry and engaged him in a 90-minute analysis of what Kerry needed to do. Around then, old Clinton hands began to join the campaign, among them former Clinton spokesmen Joe Lockhart and Michael McCurry.

“I’m very proud of the campaign John Kerry has run. He never gives up,” Clinton said.

The Kerry camp sees Clinton as an especially powerful draw with blocs of voters that Democrats think they must motivate to get the high turnout Kerry will need to win, among them black, Hispanic and Jewish voters.

After the rally, Kerry and Clinton lunched together and participated in a teleconference with about 2,000 black ministers across the country as part of a get-out-the-vote drive.

Clinton was scheduled to campaign in Florida on Tuesday. McCurry said Clinton would determine his pace on a day-to-day basis depending on his stamina. But he said Clinton planned to campaign later this week in New Mexico, Nevada and in his home state of Arkansas, where Bush appears to be losing his lead.

Clinton was clearly the main draw Tuesday. Tens of thousands of people crowded around the park less than two blocks from Philadelphia’s City Hall to see the former president. Occasional squeals could be heard as Clinton and Kerry climbed the stage to the strains of Bruce Springsteen’s “No Surrender.”

“If this isn’t good for my heart, I don’t know what is,” Clinton said, acknowledging the crowd’s response.

The added star power came as Kerry increased his campaign tempo to four states a day in a frenetic dash to Nov. 2. On Monday, in addition to rallies in Dover, N.H., and Philadelphia, the campaign stopped in Warren, Mich., and ended the day in Green Bay, Wis. On Tuesday, the campaign planned events in Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico before bedding down in Sioux City, Iowa.

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(c) 2004, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.