The Red Pill

By NEDRA PICKLER

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Democratic presidential candidates criticized President Bush's record on the economy and fighting terrorism in a debate Tuesday night, but some of their jabs left out important facts.

Sen. Joe Lieberman declared it would take a Democratic president to ``get this economy going,'' but the economy has been gaining momentum over the last several months since Bush's second tax cut took effect.

Weekly claims for unemployment insurance have fallen since April, and economic growth and productivity in the third-quarter reached 20-year highs.

Two of the candidates used a favorite attack line against Bush - Lieberman said ``3.5 million people have lost their jobs'' and Howard Dean twice cited the 3 million jobs lost under Bush - but their statements also ignored the improving economy.

It is true that about 3 million jobs were lost during the early months of the Bush presidency. But that trend has been reversing for several months as the jobless rate has dropped from a peak of 6.4 percent in June to 5.9 percent last month.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies political rhetoric, said the debate was filled with hyperbole and exaggeration typical of candidates trying to unseat an incumbent president.

``If you were trying to get facts from this debate, you are going to get confused,'' Jamieson said. ``You have the party out of power exaggerating the negative impact of the administration and ignoring the positive impact.''

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry got off the mark when he told a story about a New Hampshire couple. As he told it, Lisa and Randy Denuccio can't drink their water or take showers because they live next to a lake that is contaminated with the gasoline additive MTBE.

But in a telephone interview Tuesday night, Lisa Denuccio said the couple now showers with the water from their town rather than the old polluted well. ``We can't do without that,'' she said of the showers. However, she says they still drink bottled water.

Several of the nine Democrats attacked the tax cuts Bush pushed through Congress. But none mentioned that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who has served both Republican and Democratic presidents, has cited those cuts as a reason for the recent growth of the economy.

North Carolina Sen. John Edwards boasted that he does not take money from Washington lobbyists because they have too much influence on politics - but he neglected to mention that his campaign manager, Nick Baldick, has been a registered lobbyist with clients like Blue Cross-Blue Shield and Burger King.

On foreign policy, Wesley Clark and Dean accused Bush of ``not fighting terrorism.''

Although al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden remains at large, the administration's war has substantially thinned the ranks of the terror network, including the arrest of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The administration also has thwarted dozens of attacks through increased cooperation with allies.

On the Iraq front, Dean declared ``I think we need to bring in foreign troops,'' suggesting Americans have been going it alone.

While some big Western allies, like Germany and France, have refused to provide troops for Iraq, the campaign has received thousands of troops from the likes of Britain, Poland, Japan, Italy, Hungary, Denmark and Ukraine.

NATO countries have sent about 24,000 soldiers, compared to 130,000 U.S. troops.

Clark said it was a ``strategic blunder'' to go to war with Iraq, but in the past he has said he would have voted for the resolution authorizing Bush to launch military strikes against Saddam Hussein.

Even Ted Koppel, the ABC newsman who moderated the debate, waded into the gray area of truth when he declared that Dean had raised more money than anyone in the campaign.

While Dean's $25 million through September tops the Democratic field, it is dwarfed by the more than $100 million Bush has already raised as a Republican with no primary opponent.