If Kerry is to win the election, his focus must be on domestic issues

WITH every day that passes, it looks more likely that US President George W Bush will be re-elected in November.

Bush hasn’t even yet set foot in Madison Square Garden, where the Republican convention is being held, but already there are signs that his re-election campaign is receiving a record bounce from this week’s event.

At the end of July, the Democrats gathered in Boston for their convention and, frankly, they squandered their week in the spotlight. They spent most of the time emphasising John Kerry’s record in Vietnam. Their strategy aimed to appeal to the middle ground. The message was that because Kerry was a courageous leader in Vietnam, he could lead the United States in this “time of crisis”. The Democrats sought to contrast this with Bush’s behaviour during the Vietnam War, when he relied on family contacts to obtain National Guard placements in order to avoid the draft.