US President George W. Bush goes to his third debate with Democrat John Kerry this week accusing Kerry of shifting positions for political purposes and portraying him as an out-of-the-mainstream Massachusetts liberal.
The liberal bashing strategy is one the Bush campaign used last spring to try to undermine a Kerry jump in the polls after he won the Democratic nomination for president.
The third and final presidential debate, on Wednesday in Tempe, Arizona, is to be devoted to domestic policy.
But aides predicted the Iraq war and the war on terrorism would reappear as well with Bush hoping to score points by pointing out what his campaign called varied and conflicting Kerry positions.
The Bush campaign, in a new television ad, accused Kerry of wanting to treat terrorism as a law enforcement problem like gambling and prostitution, seizing on a comment Kerry made to The New York Times Magazine.
"How can Kerry protect us when he doesn't understand the threat?" the ad script asked.
Kerry had told the magazine: "We have to get back to the place where we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance. As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organised crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise."
Bush himself, in a recent television interview, expressed doubt the war on terror could ever be won but quickly reversed himself.
With little more than three weeks to go until Election Day on November 2, the Bush camp is projecting an upbeat tone despite losing an edge in the polls after Bush's performance in the first debate was widely panned.
As evidence of attempts to keep the atmosphere loose, top aides Karl Rove, Andy Card, Dan Bartlett and Scott McClellan donned yellow wedge-shaped "cheesehead" hats after a recent trip to Wisconsin and trooped up the stairs of Air Force One as the cameras clicked.
The attack strategy against Kerry is reminiscent of how the president's father, George Bush, ran in 1988 when he painted former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis as an out-of-touch liberal. The elder Bush was able to erase a double-digit summer lead in the polls for Dukakis with sharp attacks portraying him as soft on crime.
Bush campaign aides said Kerry has shown a tendency to gloss over aspects of his 20-year congressional record, one they say shows the Massachusetts Democrat is the most liberal member of the US Senate.
"You can run, but you can't hide," Bush said during the second debate on Friday night in St. Louis. "He voted 98 times to raise taxes... It's just not credible to say he's going to keep taxes down and balance budgets."
Kerry dismissed Bush's charges and said, "Labels don't mean anything."
Said senior Bush adviser Karl Rove: "There's a reason that he wants to ignore it, because it shows that he is a typical Massachusetts, out-of-the-mainstream liberal, and that's not what he wants people to recognise."
The Kerry campaign insisted the decorated Vietnam veteran has a moderate record, citing his support of a balanced budget and for putting more police on the streets.
"They've been trying to do this the entire campaign and they've been unsuccessful because they are running into something called facts," said Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer. "The fact of the matter is John Kerry is very much in the mainstream."
Bush was doing informal debate work on Sunday at his Texas ranch with a more formal session planned early this week. He travels to two closely fought states, New Mexico and Colorado, on Monday.
A senior Bush campaign adviser, Karen Hughes, said she was compiling "the long list of inconsistencies and examples of where Senator Kerry is trying to make sure you don't understand what his record really is, or his philosophy really is."