Republicans Try to Ridicule Kerry with NASA Photo

From: Sunimage (sunimage_at_netscap.net)
Date: 07/27/04 

Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 23:35:33 GMT

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=5788896

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By Patricia Wilson

NORFOLK, Va. (Reuters) - Republicans distributed a photo of Democratic
candidate John Kerry wearing a head-to-toe protective suit on Tuesday in
comparison to a famously unflattering photograph of Michael Dukakis in a
tank that helped sink his presidential bid in 1988.

Late-night comedians made fun of the picture and President Bush's
re-election campaign e-mailed it under the caption "Earth to Kerry."
"Bubble Boy," read the headline on the front page of the Boston Herald,
a newspaper that has not been a supporter of Kerry.

The photograph was taken on Monday at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape
Canaveral, Florida, when Kerry along with astronauts-turned-U.S.
senators John Glenn of Ohio and Bill Nelson of Florida were required by
NASA to wear the precautionary suits to tour the "Discovery" shuttle due
to launch in March.

To enter the orbiter and the cockpit area where commanders sit, Kerry,
Glenn and Nelson had to go through a "white room," and don the special
suits. Media cameras were not allowed in, but NASA later released its
own photographs.

Dukakis, the former Democratic governor of Massachusetts who was soundly
beaten by Bush's father in the 1988 presidential election, held a photo
opportunity riding in the tank to bolster a strong-on-defense image
during his campaign.

The picture of the large tank with Dukakis' helmeted head sticking out
of the gun turret was the *** of many jokes.

The Kerry campaign drew its own parallel of the space suit picture with
Bush's May 1, 2003, landing on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit to
declare an end to combat operations in Iraq in front of a banner reading
"Mission Accomplished." More than 750 U.S. troops have died in Iraq
since that day and U.S. forces are plagued by violence.

"My hunch is that the brilliant Republicans who put George Bush in a
flight suit to strut around an aircraft carrier won't get very far
giving advice to NASA and John Glenn about the kinds of coveralls to
wear on the Discovery," Kerry spokesman David Wade said of the first
American to orbit earth.

"Standing with an American hero, Senator John Glenn, aboard the
Discovery which returned him to space is a memory to last a lifetime,"
he said.

"The Republicans ought to be more worried that Americans keep telling
George Bush, 'Houston, we have a problem,"' he added, referring to a
famous communication between Apollo 13 and mission control during its
troubled mission.

Kerry, a four-term senator from Massachusetts and decorated Vietnam War
veteran, stopped in Norfolk, home to the world largest Navy base, on his
way to Boston to accept the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday.

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