Campaigns Cross Paths in Midwest

John F. Kerry joins Shirleen Martin, a job-training administrator, at an economic summit the Democratic challenger held in Davenport, Iowa. (Larry Fisher -- Quad-City Times via AP)

"It is not enough to advocate reform; you have to be able to get it done," Bush said. "We are getting it done."

When he turned to Iraq and efforts to thwart terrorism, Bush added a new twist to his usual remarks. It was an allusion to the widening public disenchantment with the administration's Iraq policies -- and Kerry's criticism of Bush's response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes.

"Those who claim that America's war on terror is to blame for terror threats to the United States have a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the enemy," he said.

After staging a series of rallies on his bus trip in the past five days, Kerry shifted course in Davenport, conducting a sober seminar on the economy in which he accused Bush of squandering the surpluses of the 1990s. "John Edwards and I are going to put back in place fiscal responsibility," he said.

Kerry promoted his plans to expand health care and said he would seek bipartisan support for budget and economic policies that he argued would be good for business and workers alike. With some corporate executives saying Bush's policies in Iraq are hurting American business, Kerry drew his loudest applause when he passionately declared that he can do what Bush has not done to attract international support to the U.S. mission in Iraq.

"It will take a new president of the United States with new credibility to have a fresh start for our country," he said. He added: "I've got big cards to play here to bring others to the table. . . . I will get the target off our troops. I will reduce the number of [U.S.] troops . . . and I will get the world to share in this effort because the world has a stake in it."

Before his morning event, his campaign advisers released the names of about 200 corporate executives who support Kerry. Campaign officials said the level of business support was unprecedented for a Democratic challenger.

Many on the list are well-known Democrats, but the campaign said some have voted Republican in the past. Owsley Brown II, chairman and chief executive of Brown-Forman Corp., said he had reluctantly supported Bush over Gore but backs Kerry now because the Massachusetts senator offers "a whole different depth and breadth of leadership."

The Bush campaign immediately charged that Kerry was trumpeting support from the kinds of business leaders that the Democratic senator denounced as "Benedict Arnold CEOs" during the primaries because they were with firms that have moved jobs overseas. "It's another example of John Kerry saying one thing and doing another," said Bush-Cheney spokesman Steve Schmidt.

But Kerry campaign officials said Kerry's use of the "Benedict Arnold" designation had to do only with firms that incorporated overseas to avoid U.S. tax liabilities, not firms that have engaged in "outsourcing."

Kerry continued his bus trip by heading south along the Mississippi River with a rally scheduled for Wednesday evening in Hannibal, Mo.

From Davenport, the president traveled to a family farm in Le Sueur, Minn., to talk up the administration's conservation policies, then appeared at another campaign rally at an enormous stone quarry in Mankato, Minn.

At the Katzenmeyer farm, he announced three changes to the popular Conservation Reserve Program, a 20-year-old federal effort to reduce soil erosion and conserve wetlands and wildlife by subsidizing farmers to retire part of their cropland.