"We need a real deal, like John Kerry, not a raw deal, like what's in the White House now," Mr. Cleland said on Friday in Columbia, S.C., with Mr. Kerry at his side. "We need somebody who felt the sting of battle, not someone who didn't even complete his tour stateside in the Guard."
The White House went into a furious counterattack on Tuesday. "It is outrageous and baseless," Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush's press secretary, told reporters, breaking the White House practice that all political questions be answered by officials at Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va.
2/02/04