- 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 butt 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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