Back To The Heartland

As foreign policy eruptions threatened to draw attention away from the presidential campaign, Al Gore and George W. Bush renewed their fight for the White House in battleground states on Friday.

For the second straight day, the vice president cut short his campaign schedule in the Midwest to return to Washington for a high-level meeting on the mounting tensions in the Middle East.

"He's been an important part of the Clinton-Gore administration's national secrity team for the last eight years ... and after some consultation he decided to go back," said Gore spokesman Chris Lehane.

But first, Gore addressed an outdoor rally in Grand Rapids, Iowa, beginning with a moment of silence for the American sailors who died in the explosion aboard the USS Cole in a Yemeni port.

On an outdoor stage decorated with pumpkins, Gore collected the endorsement of a local Republican mayor, who said a president should have the "intelligence to understand the issues …[and] the ability to articulate those issues" – a clear dig at Bush.

Before a large crowd of supporters, the vice president delivered a truncated version of his convention speech, and emphasized Bush’s dismal health-care record in Texas.

Gore called Bush’s record as governor a “window onto the priorities," and said "Nowhere can you see the contrast clearer than on the issue of health care."

The Democratic presidential nominee had been due to campaign in Michigan on Friday afternoon. He will resume his campaign schedule in Detroit on Saturday.

Ignored murder confession Two and a half years after a convict wrote a letter to the Texas governor admitting to a killing, two men convicted of the crime are still in prison.

The Bush-Cheney ticket characterized the move as a short-term political hustle that’s bad for long-term national security.

"It’s the petroleum reserve, not a political reserve," Bush said to cheers from the crowd.

The Texas governor said the policy had failed, pointing to the rise in the price of home heating oil since the administration's action. He did not mention that the price of oil rose almost $3 per barrel in response to Thursday’s events in the Middle East – fighting between Israelis and Palestinians, and the deadly explosion aboard the USS Cole in Yemen.

The price of gasoline and home heating oil are not academic in Michigan, the country’s sixth largest consumer of both.

Bush continued to champion oil exploration in the Alaskan National Wildlife Arctic Refuge (ANWAR), charging the Clinton-Gore administration green-lighted drilling in an adjacent area that's twice as large, and which yields just one-fifth of the oil ANWAR may hold.

"The vice president says he’s for natural gas," Bush said Friday. "He just doesn’t like people to find it and move it to where it's needed." Gore says the "pristine" Alaskan wilderness refuge should be protected for future generations.

Over the weekend, both candidates will turn their attention to preparing for the third and final presidential debate in St. Louis next Tuesday, exactly three weeks before an election that remains close in the polls.

Bush will spend the weekend at his ranch in Crawford, Texas; Gore is taking more than a dozen "real people" advisers to the Innsbrook Resort near St. Louis.