US PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE: There are lies and damn lies and then there is campaign rhetoric. Conor O'Clery reports from Tempe, Arizona
As President George Bush and Senator John Kerry enter the final stretch of a bitter presidential campaign, charges and promises are being made that defy logic and truth. On domestic policy - the topic of last night's third and final debate in Tempe - the two candidates promised for example to halve the deficit.
However, President Bush's plans for new tax cuts and Mr Kerry's spending proposals would both add to the deficit rather than reduce it, according to a report yesterday by the bipartisan Concord Coalition in Washington.
Mr Bush accuses his opponent of being a tax-and-spend liberal but his own tax cuts and spending plans would almost exactly match the cost of Mr Kerry's package of proposals at $1.3 trillion, according to the group, which advocates deficit reduction.
The President came to Tempe, just outside Phoenix, last night determined to depict Mr Kerry in the 90-minute debate as too far to the left for mainstream America.
"My opponent is a tax and spend liberal," he declared. "I'm a passionate conservative."
To make his case, Mr Bush cited a National Journal ranking of Mr Kerry as the most liberal senator in 2003, but the magazine has since distanced itself from the claim and, as Knight Ridder Newspapers pointed out yesterday, the overall voting record of the Massachusetts senator places him in the mainstream of the Democratic Party.
Mr Kerry said he rejected labels but he has criticised Mr Bush for adhering to an "extreme right-wing ideology" in opposing federal funding of stem-cell research.
On jobs, the Democratic nominee has accused the president of presiding over a 1.6 million job loss since taking office. This however is the number of private sector jobs lost in the last four years; the overall lost jobs figure for the private and public sectors is 600,000.
On healthcare, one of the burning issues in a country where five million more people have no coverage than four years ago, Mr Bush accuses Mr Kerry of being untruthful in saying that "the government has nothing to do" with the Democratic campaign's health care proposals.
"The facts are, eight out of 10 people who get healthcare under Senator Kerry's plan would be placed on a government program," Mr Bush declares at rallies, adding: "See, he can run, but he cannot hide" from his record.
Mr Kerry's proposal, which would cover 29 million out of the 45 million with no coverage, is in fact based on keeping current employer-based plans and would require the government only to pick up 75 per cent of the cost of "catastrophic" claims and change some regulations.
Mr Kerry pledged in the last debate that he would not raise taxes on anyone earning less that $200,000 a year. He claims that rolling back a Bush tax cut on the wealthy would generate $860 billion over 10 years and pay the $650 billion cost of his health plan, while some analysts say his healthcare reform would cost more than twice that.
Mr Kerry for his part blames the president for the 17 per cent increase in Medicare costs but Mr Bush is responsible for only half of the increase.
While the focus of the campaign has turned to domestic issues, the president still spends a lot of his time defending his policy in Iraq.
He continues to insist that Iraq was a threat, despite the report of the chief US arms inspector, Mr Charles Duelfer, last week that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction or the means to make them and that the chaos in Iraq had in fact increased the terrorist threat.
Mr Bush has also distorted comments made by Mr Kerry on foreign policy. At a recent rally he told supporters that in the first debate his rival had announced a new "Kerry doctrine" which would involve a "global test" where America would have to submit to foreign countries before going to war.
Mr Kerry did not use the word "doctrine" and said he would not cede the right to any country to stop America taking pre-emptive action, but it should pass a "global test" where Americans understood what was being done and the US could prove to the world it was for legitimate reasons.
Mr Kerry's running mate, Mr John Edwards, campaigning in Denver, Colorado, accused the president of being completely unwilling to acknowledge what was happening with the economy and healthcare, adding that in the debate: "I guarantee you . . . he's gonna try to put lipstick on this pig." A claim by Mr Edwards that the Bush administration was blocking stem-cell research which could one day help disabled people such as actor Christopher Reeve walk again infuriated Republicans.
The Senate majority leader, Mr Bill Frist, said the North Carolina senator's use of Reeve's death on Saturday was "crass, opportunist and shameful". Mrs Elizabeth Edwards commented on CNN that what was "shameful" was Mr Bush's remark that he "sees the numbers on his desk" of US soldiers killed in Iraq rather than that "these are real people".
The Vice President, Mr Dick Cheney, meanwhile, campaigning in the mid-west, continued to make the claim - discredited by the CIA and the 9/11 commission - that al-Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein, which was used to justify the war, though he conceded it was "controversial".
Mr Bush held three campaign rallies in Colorado before the debate, underlining how tight the race has become in a state that Mr Bush he won by eight points in 2000. In the remaining 19 days before polling, Mr Bush and Mr Kerry plan to fan out across 10 battleground states: Colorado, Iowa, Florida, New Mexico, Minnesota, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
The Bush campaign might however pull out of Michigan, where Kerry is ahead, and focus on New Jersey, where the Democrats unexpectedly seem vulnerable. In Ohio, the most contested state, there is a statistical dead heat, and while Mr Kerry is slightly ahead in Pennsylvania, Mr Bush still holds a lead in Florida.