US: President Bush and Mr John Kerry attacked each other's core issues yesterday, with the President denouncing the Democratic challenger's healthcare platform and the Massachusetts senator accusing Mr Bush of being soft on terrorism for not trying to have a ban on assault weapons renewed, writes Conor O'Clery, North America Editor, in New York
The weapons issue gave Mr Kerry an opportunity to portray himself as tougher on national security than Mr Bush, whose ratings on the war on terrorism exceed those for the Democrat.
The 1994 ban on 19 types of military assault weapons, including fully-equipped AK47s and Uzis, lapsed at midnight on Sunday after Republican leaders on Capitol Hill said they had no plans to renew it. Mr Bush said he would sign the ban if Congress passed it, but did not press leaders of Congress to act.
"Today George Bush made the job of terrorists easier, and made the job of America's law enforcement officers harder, and that's just plain wrong," said Mr Kerry, who secured the endorsement of the National Association of Police Organisations, which opposes the sale of such firearms.
"George Bush made a choice today. He chose his powerful friends in the gun lobby over the police officers and the families he promised to protect."
Presidential spokesman Mr Scott McClellan called this "another false attack from Senator Kerry", and said violent crime was at a 30-year low.
The powerful National Rifle Association celebrated the end of the ban, and urged the defeat of Mr Kerry as someone who "will diligently work, this year and beyond" to weaken the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Gun control advocate Ms Sarah Brady, whose husband Jim was wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt on former president Ronald Reagan, said allowing the ban to lapse was "purely political", and accused Mr Bush of failing to exert leadership.
Mr Kerry also criticised Mr Bush for proposing to cut funding for community police - a pet legislative project of the senator - from $482 million to $97 million.
Speaking at a Michigan rally, Mr Bush yesterday took the fight to Mr Kerry on healthcare, an issue on which the Democratic candidate scores best.
"I'm running against a fellow who has got a massive, complicated blueprint to have our government take over the decision-making in healthcare," he said. "Not only is his plan going to increase the power of bureaucrats in your life, but he can't pay for it unless he raises your taxes."
He advocated community health centres, and attacked Mr Kerry as a supporter of "junk law suits" that drive up the cost of medicine. A Kerry spokesman accused Mr Bush of taking money from drug and insurance companies "hand over fist".
Democrats also seized on a statement by Mr Powell on Sunday that he had "seen nothing that makes a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and that awful regime and what happened on 9/11", saying this exposed a rift between Mr Powell and Vice-President Mr Dick Cheney.
Mr Cheney last week claimed that a reason for attacking Iraq was that it harboured terrorists, and had "a relationship with al-Qaeda". Mr Kerry's running mate, Mr John Edwards, said "from this day forward" Bush officials should never make the claim that there was a link between Saddam and September 11th.
The Bush campaign denied any differences with Mr Powell, and yesterday in Michigan Mr Bush said that one of the main opponents of the US in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, "has got ties to al-Qaeda" and was "in and out of Baghdad".
Mr Powell also said that he thought Mr Kerry, as commander in chief, would respond "in a robust way" to a terrorist attack.
Last week Mr Cheney said that if the voters made a wrong choice the likelihood was that the US would be hit again.
The two sides also sparred over Korea, with Mr Kerry calling the New York Times to make the case that North Korea had become a nuclear nightmare because the administration was distracted by Iraq.
Meanwhile 700,000 copies of an unflattering book on the Bush family by controversial celebrity author Kitty Kelley will be in US bookstores today.
On NBC yesterday, interviewer Matt Lauer put it to Kelley that the main story from the book was the claim that Mr Bush did cocaine at Camp David between 1988 and 1992.
Ms Kelley agreed it was a serious accusation "only because the President has told us that he was not doing drugs at that time", adding that Mr Bush had never denied using, buying or selling cocaine.