Kerry: Bushies lying about me

There was fire in his eyes (a journalist gets to see such things when he's using a tape recorder and doesn't have to look down at his notebook), anger in his voice and a sting in his words. John Kerry, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts who wants to make Republican President George W. Bush a one-termer, was in a fighting mood.
Perhaps it was the cold wind that had swept through downtown Youngstown, dampening the spirits of the Democratic faithful who had gathered to hear him speak April 27. Or it may have been the Bush campaign's unrelenting attack through television commercials of his voting record in the Senate, especially on the issue of defense. Or Kerry might just have reached the boiling point because of the national press's preoccupation that day with his anti-Vietnam War stance after he had returned from that conflict a genuine military hero.
Whatever the reason, the expected Democratic presidential nominee let loose a verbal barrage when he was asked, during a brief interview, to respond to the Bush administration's charge that his tax rollback plan and his job-creation initiative were nothing more than political smoke and mirrors.
'Illogical'
A Bush spokesman had publicly ridiculed Kerry's proposal to create 417,000 jobs in Ohio, most of them in the manufacturing sector. Here's what Kevin Madden had to say: "John Kerry's illogical economic policies of higher taxes and more government regulation would send the Ohio economy into a tailspin. You simply cannot grow Ohio's local and regional economies by imposing burdensome taxes and an extreme environmental regulation agenda on Ohio's taxpayers and small businesses."
Here's how Kerry responded:
"That is the most bogus, phony, scare tactic, artificial, lack-of-truth argument that you can hear. It's typical of the Bush administration, typical of them; scare people, don't have real facts. There is no way [that] closing a loophole where the taxpayer of Youngstown is taking out their pocket to give to a company that has already left America, that is overseas, exporting goods back to America, that it's going to cost them jobs here. That's crazy."
Lack-of-truth argument is a euphemism for a lie. The other words Kerry used, led by bogus, also belong to the family of lies.
That's what made the Democratic challenger's comment so compelling. He was accusing the Bush campaign, and by extension the president, of lying.
Them are fighting words, particularly in the political arena, so you'd think the Bushies would be eager to respond. Wrong. A spokesman promised last week to have someone react, but no one did.
Naked bodies in Iraq vs. an accusation of lying. Tough call.
On a roll
But Kerry wasn't satisfied with simply blasting the president and his operatives for their tactics. He went for the jugular.
"They've spent $70 million telling Americans that I'm going to raise their taxes. I'm not. He [Bush] is defending people who earn $200,000 a year or more. The only people affected by my plan economically are people in the highest 2 percent income brackets in America. I get hurt. I'm going to pay more taxes, but I think I should."
Asked whether individuals in that bracket aren't the ones who invest in the economy, Kerry said:
"I invest in the economy. So do other people. And you know what? It's not going to change our ability to be able to invest in the economy, nor is it going to change our lifestyle. But the average person's lifestyle has been changed, and the jobs are not being created. Now there is not even an incentive that guarantees that that rich person invests in America. They can go invest in China, they can go invest anywhere they want.
"This is the most, you know ... what we need to do is create jobs here, and the way you do it is by lowering the cost of health care in America. I have a plan to do it. George Bush has no plan at all. He's had four years. He doesn't even talk about the uninsured. You never hear it come out of his mouth. ... He just talks about 'my tax cuts got to be made permanent, that's how we're going to grow jobs.' Well, Mr. President, you promised that three times in a row, three strikes and you're out."
CORRECTION
Dr. George McCloud is dean of the College of Fine and Performing Arts at Youngstown State University. McCloud was misidentified in last week's column. The dean of the College of Arts and Sciences is Dr. Robert Bolla.