Tuesday, July 29, 2003

By James O'Toole, Post-Gazette Politics Editor

Democratic presidential candidates joined in a round of tag-team Bush-bashing yesterday, taking turns flaying his administration's performance on education, the economy and national security.

Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, chats with Mark McLawhorn, 18, a student from South Carolina and a Dean supporter, as the candidate makes his way into the convention center for yesterday's forum. (John Heller, Post-Gazette) Click photo for larger image. Related stories Bush talks up his record at Urban League conference 200 protest outside convention center during Bush appearance Education's Paige calls achievement gap 'un-American'

Seven Democrats spoke on the same stage the president had occupied just hours earlier, addressing delegates of the National Urban League conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown.

Had he stuck around, the president wouldn't have liked what he heard.

Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, said Bush had played the race card on affirmative action. The Rev. Al Sharpton accused Bush of lying. All of the candidates bemoaned the administration's record of job losses, while U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., said Bush had displayed "a serious case of wishful thinking" in predicting the economy had begun to turn around.

Bush elicited a polite if not electric reception from the predominantly African-American group in late-morning remarks that highlighted his support for faith-based institutions amid a familiar defense of his administration's policies on the economy and in response to terrorism.

The Democrats drew more enthusiastic responses, but the contrast between the sizes of the crowds that heard the president and his challengers provided a visual metaphor for the hurdles the Democrats face in attracting attention to their campaigns.

Bush spoke in late morning before a crowd of approximately 1,500. By the time the Democrats' event started in the early evening, about a half-hour behind schedule, the audience appeared to total not much more than a third of the president's.

	Seven Democratic presidential hopefuls addressed the Urban League conference yesterday. Top row from left, Rev. Al Sharpton, U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, Rep. Dick Gephardt. Second row, from left, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, ambassador and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and U.S. Sen. John Edwards. (CREDIT, Post-Gazette) Click photo for larger image.

Sharpton appeared first in a format in which each candidate spoke for five minutes, then answered two questions from a moderator.

"I hope to come before you next year as president of the United States," Sharpton said. "Unlike the president you heard today, I will try to uphold the truth."

He accused Bush of playing "a shell game" in his education policies, charging that Bush had proclaimed a "No Child Left Behind" initiative while failing to provide adequate funds.

Sharpton said Bush was guilty of hypocrisy in the recent Supreme Court affirmative action cases involving the University of Michigan. He said Bush benefited from a different kind of affirmative action through family connections to the elite schools he attended.

"He embodies a set-aside plan," Sharpton jibed. "In fact, they had to set aside a whole election to make him president."

Dean sharply attacked Bush for invoking the word "quota," in commenting on the Michigan case.

"The word 'quota' is a racially loaded word designed to appeal to people who are afraid they are going to lose their jobs to people of color," Dean said. "The president played the race card and he has the nerve to come before the National Urban League and ask you for your help and support."

U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., called a rise in the number of Americans living below the poverty line since Bush took office "a scandal," saying that those who fell out of the middle class had been "dashed against the rocky shoals of compassionate conservatism."

Lieberman, former Vice President Al Gore's running mate three years ago, also claimed that Bush and his attorney general, John Ashcroft, had embraced racial profiling in a flawed response to terrorism.

"Sept. 11 changed our history but should not change our values," he said.

U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, in a broadside at Bush's foreign policy, demanded that the United States get out of Iraq and cede control to the United Nations.

"Our sons and daughters are being used for target practice because of lies, greed and desire for empire," he charged.

U.S. Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., said the administration's policies demonstrate that Bush "honors and respects only one thing -- wealth."

Edwards also noted that earlier in the day, he had become the latest of his party's contenders to unveil a plan for expanded health care. He did not dwell on its details, nor contrast it with his rivals' proposals, in keeping with an evening in which the White House aspirants saved their ammunition for the incumbent rather than one another.

Gephardt, who has fronted the most extensive and costly plan to expand health care, said, "This is not just an economic issue. It's a moral issue."

He noted that one of his first acts as president would be to ask Congress to repeal the Bush tax cuts in order to fund his plan.

Ambassador and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois criticized Bush's education policies as "just a lot of unfunded mandates."

"Now is the time to take the 'Men Only' sign off the White House door," she insisted.

Through some combination of grass-roots organizing and slick advance work, the Dean campaign mobilized the most impressive welcome received by any candidate outside the hall. In contrast to the relatively unheralded entries of the other Democrats, several score of sign-carrying Dean boosters waited for him outside the convention center entrance and exploded in cheers as he arrived.

All of the major Democratic contenders showed up for the back-to-back appearances except U.S. Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Bob Graham, D-Fla.

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