The lawsuits are already flying in Florida, scene of the infamous meltdown in 2000, and accusations of illegal suppression of votes or mishandling of registrations are flying in half a dozen states.Senator Kerry’s most important remaining task is to go beyond the doubts and disillusion with the incumbent’s performance that he has helped propagate and get voters genuinely enthused about him. Even if the debates broke his way, nobody is underestimating the Bush campaign’s capacity to change the subject – by playing up fears of another terrorist attack, say – or to launch a last-minute volley of personal attacks similar to those that sank Governor Ann Richards of Texas in 1994 or Senator John McCain in the Republican primaries of 2000.There is also the very live issue of vote manipulation, or out-and-out fraud. He may also have benefited from a certain sense of debate fatigue – a feeling that most of the rhetoric had been heard before and that the basic dynamics of the race remain unchanged.In a campaign season peppered with baseball references – spin-doctors from both camps told reporters after the debate that their man was the better “closer” – Senator Kerry faces a challenge not unlike that of his beloved Boston Red Sox, whose latest World Series game with their eternal rivals, the New York Yankees, offered stiff competition for the nation’s attention on Wednesday night.Like the Red Sox, the Democratic candidate has certainly shown he can rally from behind but final victory could still prove elusive. A clutch of instant polls gave him the edge by margins ranging from 1 percentage point to 14 percentage points.Since his knockout performance in the first debate in Miami two weeks ago, the Democratic challenger has raced from behind and turned the contest into a dead heat. The scowling and terse, rote answers that sunk him in the first debate were replaced by smiles and the occasional dash of humour, making him much more likable.The President fared poorly in the post-debate fact-check analysis conducted on the main television networks and on the internet, but during the debate he suffered no crushing blows and made no glaring gaffes.
His hope now is that undecided voters will continue to opt for him in sufficient numbers to put key swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida firmly into his column and with them an unassailable majority in the electoral college.But it is not yet certain whether Senator Kerry can achieve this goal on the strength of the debates alone or if he still has some work to do to make American voters warm to him and his occasionally chilly, somewhat aloof patrician manner.President Bush may have had trouble answering Mr Kerry’s withering criticisms on domestic policy – the focus of the debate at Arizona State University – but he can take solace from his best performance of the three encounters. “Outside of course, or at home, it’s another matter,” Landis says with a chuckle.In the last couple of weeks of the campaign, the church will provide members with voters’ guides, describing the voting records and positions of both major parties. John Kerry emerged the clear winner yesterday from his third and final debate with President George Bush, buoying the spirits of his campaign as he seeks to establish a clear lead in the 18 remaining days of an extraordinarily tight United States presidential election.
As he did in their previous two encounters, Senator Kerry came across as far more assured on policy issues, especially on meat-and-potatoes topics such as health care, jobs and social security. Outside, work has started on an $800,000 (£450,000) extension, for a new Bible studies and children’s education centre. The new construction is entirely paid for by donations from the congregation – “I teach the principle of tithing, and people believe in it,” Pastor Landis says (It helps of course that these donations are tax deductible. Were he to spell out his Republican preferences from the pulpit on Sundays, Word of Grace would lose its tax-exempt charitable status.)On the tables is a glossy kit complete with a CD decorated with the American flag and filled with brochures and pamphlets stressing the importance of exercising the right to vote, and setting out exact instructions for what a pastor can and cannot tell his flock in the official surrounds of the church.
The information, one may be sure, will be made available without comment or advice from the pastor But everyone knows what that advice would be.. There are no grey areas over things like this.” When Christian America moves, it is a mighty army indeed. One glance at the Word of Grace Ministries brings home the vibrancy and energy of the church in the US, where more than 90 per cent say they believe in God, and some 60 per cent claim to attend services regularly.The church is surrounded by small malls, neat middle-class housing estates and green rolling hills. Americans appear to be preparing to cast their ballots in landslide numbers on 2 November, a reflection of the deep passions stirring supporters of both candidates in the presidential race and the fruit of frenzied efforts by each party to persuade citizens to register to vote.
“John Kerry is more liberal than Al Gore, and people know that George Bush is a man of faith,” Pastor Landis says.There are new issues too. As usual, education and abortion weigh heavily, “but I think the biggest issue for Christians is opposition to gay marriage The Bible is clear. For Christians, the choice is starker this time, for an election commonly described as the most important in recent US history. An organisation which fails all 15 of its performance targets is likely to generate an avalanche of complaints.”The taxpayer ends up paying twice for the failure of Royal Mail, once for its losses and reduced profitability and again for the increased cost of funding Postwatch.”A spokesman for Royal Mail said the company handled 1.6 million calls to its telephone hotline last year, but stressed that many of those calls were inquiries about services rather than complaints.He insisted that the company had made customer service “our number one priority” and said services were improving after problems moving to single deliveries earlier this year.The spokesman said: “Improving our quality of service is our number one priority. But in 2004, a vast campaign, in which the Word of Grace Ministries has played its own tiny but typical part, has been mounted to reach these potentially crucial voters The strategy moreover seems to be working.
According to one authoritative study, 2 million more evangelicals have registered to cast their vote But improved organisation is only part of the story. Perhaps they were disgusted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal that turned many evangelicals off politics entirely, or by the last-minute revelation that a youthful Bush had been convicted of a drunk driving offence – a mishap, claims Karl Rove, the President’s political adviser, that turned a potential blow-out into the closest election in American history.Either way however, by Mr Rove’s calculation, 4 million evangelicals failed to show up at the polls. Maybe evangelicals perceived little difference between the candidates. And every sign is the appeal is being heeded.In 2000, things were rather different.
