The American Spectator

Washington Prowler

(Page 2 of 2)

br> The Kerry campaign is going to have to start doing opposition research on itself. On Tuesday, the campaign thought it was being really clever by giving political reporters around the country, but especially in Michigan and Ohio, a story about how the buses that President Bush was using for his campaign swing through those states were Canadian built. /p>

"They were pushing the story hard, especially since Bush was using Kerry's SUV flip-flops as a punch line in every stop on the trip," says a reporter who has been covering Kerry.

The only problem is that the bus Kerry has been using throughout his primary campaign was Canadian built too. Bad: the Kerry campaign didn't know it. Worse: The Bush campaign did. "We weren't even trying to bait them," says a Bush campaign staffer.

Another embarrassing Kerry moment came Tuesday when two of Kerry's former commanding officers, former lieutenant commander George Elliott and former Coast Guard captain Adrian Lonsdale, announced they were not supporting Kerry's presidential campaign.

Both men had supported Kerry in 1996, when questions about his service in Vietnam were raised in his Senate race. The Kerry campaign was apparently caught off guard by the show of disapproval from men Kerry had once considered loyal backers.

"We knew that they weren't going to be surrogates for us, but we didn't expect this," says a Kerry staffer in Washington. "When word got out about who was standing against Senator Kerry, there was some surprise. It's not clear that we knew how many of the old military regime were against him."

p>According to the staffer, in the early days of the primary, when the notion of putting together Kerry's "Band of Brothers" was being toyed with, Kerry advisers reached out to many of the men who served under and above Kerry. A number took a pass on the opportunity to stand with Kerry, but many did not voice out and out displeasure with Kerry's candidacy. "We never thought we'd see the show of force these guys are showing," says the Kerry staffer. "It's not a problem. Yet." br> /p>

topics:
Military, NATO, Immigration