Tight security as Democrats fire first shots

By RUPERT CORNWELL in Boston

Amid a festival of schmoozing, political networking, and minutely choreographed speechifying - all protected by some of the tightest security in US history - John Kerry will this week tell Americans why he should be their 44th President.

The Democratic Party convention, which starts in Boston today, is the first gathering of its kind since the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, and is being guarded as a possible target for al Qaeda in its presumed aim to disrupt the campaign for the White House.

In political terms, the event, attended by almost 4500 delegates and three times as many journalists, is little more than a giant party political broadcast for the Democrats, one that will give Kerry a perfect send-off for an election shaping up as a nail-biter to rival the epic battle in 2000.

In most polls, the Massachusetts senator leads George W. Bush by a point or two. A new Wall Street Journal-NBC poll yesterday reversed the pattern, putting the President ahead by 47 to 45 per cent.

Kerry's acceptance speech on Friday, carried live by every TV network, will be his best - and perhaps his last - chance to introduce himself in the manner of his own choosing to a public who still have a blurred picture of who he is and what he stands for.

All-out Bush bashing will come later. The priority this week is to reach out to independent voters in the centre and to shift from the negative to the positive.


"I do not want it to be that," Kerry told the New York Times yesterday when asked if he was worried about the convention turning into a repetitious tirade against the current occupant of the White House.

"I want this to be a positive affirmation of why I'm running and what I want to do as President."

To the casual observer, it could be as easily a Republican gathering. The schmoozing will be lubricated by US$40 million ($62.8 million) of corporate sponsorship and a parade of parties each glitzier than the last.

The programme is drenched in patriotism, replete with reminders of Kerry's war record in Vietnam.

Everything has been shaped to counter the Republicans' habitual advantage on national security and fighting terrorism - still Bush's strongest suit despite the setbacks in Iraq and the failure to capture Osama bin Laden.

In years past, so cautious an approach might have rekindled the eternal divisions between Democrat radicals and moderates.

This time the party is so united in its desire to oust Bush that, inside the meeting hall centre at least, there will not be a whiff of disagreement.

The 45-page Democratic platform is typically bland. It calls for wider healthcare coverage and stronger steps to protect the environment, and picks up Kerry's pledge to rescind the Bush tax cuts for those making US$200,000 or more a year.

But on Iraq, the most burning issue of the moment, the blandness verges on self-parody.

Avoiding taking a position on the merits of the case, the platform merely opines that "people of good will disagree over whether America should have gone to war".

Some, of course, will want to register their objections more forcefully.

But demonstrators will be corralled this week into a fenced-off area across from the sports arena were the convention is taking place.


The skies above Boston will be patrolled by eight F-16 fighters, leaving grounded the TV news station helicopters that normally report on traffic jams.

This week the jams may be in unaccustomed places.

Dozens of roads will be closed, including a section of Interstate 93, the city's main north-south traffic artery, running alongside the converted Fleet Centre, normally home to the ice hockey Boston Bruins and the NBA's Boston Celtics.

Litterbins have been removed, and thousands of police and agents will patrol the central area of the city.

Also closed is a main commuter railway station near the Fleet Centre. Many Bostonians grumpily bowed to the inevitable and left town for the week.

Boston is a city steeped in Democratic lore, home to the Kennedy clan and capital of Massachusetts, one of the most reliable Democratic states.

But not all Bostonians are overjoyed by the shutdowns and disruption imposed to prevent the one unscripted event everyone dreads - a terrorist attack.

When Boston snared the 2004 Democratic convention, three years ago, the city fathers reckoned it would be a US$150 million bonanza.

Today, some fear the gathering could be a money-loser - which could even cost Kerry votes.

- INDEPENDENT