US: Prior to last night's second debate between President George Bush and Senator John Kerry, Democratic aides handed out dozens of pairs of rose-tinted glasses to supporters to mock Mr Bush as someone who cannot see the reality of America's problems.
It was a light-hearted gesture in what has become a bitter fight between the two contenders for the White House, with the President using attack as the best defence over setbacks in Iraq and on the economy.
But Mr Bush received a setback yesterday when just hours before the town-hall style debate got under way in Missouri, the government reported that US employers had hired 96,000 extra workers in September, far fewer than expected and not enough, according to many economists, to keep up with population growth.
Mr Bush is now the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net job loss during his term of office, a fact that gave Mr Kerry a strong card to play with in the debate where unaligned voters determined the questions.
"Today, we received another disappointing jobs report for America's workers," Mr Kerry told reporters. "The verdict is in: With 1.6 million private sector jobs lost during his term, President Bush will be the first president in 72 years to face the electorate with an economy that has lost jobs under his watch."
The Bush-Cheney campaign rushed out an advert proclaiming that the administration had created nearly two million jobs in the last year, "nearly two million more reasons why Americans are optimistic about our future". The ferociousness of recent exchanges on Iraq, however, mean the closing stages of the campaign may be decided more by the war than the economy.
Mr Bush protested that the report of the US arms inspector delivered to Congress this week, which found that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, actually underlined that he intended renewing his WMD programme and had got around UN sanctions.
Sharpening his attacks on Senator Kerry, the President said he would "make the world more dangerous" if elected, while for his part the Democrat said: "This week has provided definitive evidence as to why George Bush should not be re-elected president of the United States."
At a Republican rally in Wisconsin Mr Bush read an excerpt from a speech Mr Kerry made in Congress two years ago on the danger of Saddam Hussein spreading nuclear technology around the word, and asked: "Just who is the one trying to mislead the American people." The Kerry campaign said that in the same speech the senator had said regime change was not in itself enough reason to invade Iraq unilaterally.
The Bush camp is worried by polls showing that Mr Kerry has come back into contention in battleground states, and taken a 50-47 per cent lead over Mr Bush in the latest nationwide AP poll. Mr Bush has lost a six-point lead in the crucial state of Ohio where the Democrat is now ahead by one point, and he has also lost ground in Pennsylvania.
The vice-president, Mr Dick Cheney, yesterday telegraphed the punches Mr Bush planned to throw at the Massachusetts senator in the debate.
Mr Kerry "has consistently been on the wrong side" of major national security issues during his 20-year history in the Senate, he told a campaign rally, citing, in particular, Mr Kerry's vote against the first Gulf War in 1991.
"I think it's a pretty clear choice," he said. "I don't see anything in John Kerry's record or background that leads me to believe he would aggressively prosecute the war on terror the way President Bush is." The report from the chief US weapons inspector in Iraq concluded that Saddam Hussein had no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons, no capability to produce such weapons or nuclear weapons, and no plans to revive those programmes.
The third and final debate will be held on October 13th in Tempe, Arizona and will focus on economic and domestic policy.