WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush and Democratic rival John Kerry hit the campaign trail running, courting voters in battleground states after their hard-fought second debate left the race for the White House in a dead heat.
Bush, speaking at campaign events in St. Louis, Missouri, and Waterloo, Iowa, renewed his attacks on Kerry's credibility, accusing the senator from Massachusetts of repeatedly changing his positions on Iraq.
"With a straight face he said he only had one position on Iraq. He must think we've been on another planet," Bush said.
"In the spring of 2003, when I ordered the invasion of Iraq, Senator Kerry said it was the right decision. Now he says it's the wrong war," Bush said, adding: "He can run, but he cannot hide."
In Elryia, Ohio, Kerry depicted Bush as angry, wrong-headed and unfit to lead and lambasted him on Iraq, his failure to find terror kingpin Osama bin Laden and his tax policies.
"Do we want leadership as it's called that can't face reality and admit mistakes or do we want leadership that sees the truth and tells the truth to the American people?" Kerry asked.
"For me, the most stunning moment of the whole evening was when George Bush was asked to name three mistakes that he has made ... and the president couldn't even name one."
Neither man emerged as the clear winner of Friday's second debate, held at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
But most analysts agreed Bush rebounded from a poor performance in the first debate on September 30, leaving the race deadlocked with just 24 days to go before the November 2 election.
As Bush and Kerry campaigned, the US Chamber of Commerce and the November Fund, a new political group, announced they will launch this week a new wave of Republican attack ads targeting Kerry running mate John Edwards, a trial lawyer.
They told Time magazine the ad campaign would zero in on malpractice suits like those Edwards brought against the medical profession, charging him with "lawsuit abuse."
"Doctors are leaving, hospitals are closing, health care costs are skyrocketing at an alarming rate," says one direct-mail ad. "Tell Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards that it is time to support common sense lawsuit abuse reform."
Bush also stopped off for a campaign rally at Chanhassen, in the northern state of Minnesota, Saturday following his stops in Missouri and Iowa while Kerry was to go on to the southern state of Florida from Ohio.
Both candidates have been concentrating their funds and energies on states where the race is tight in a bid to win their key electoral votes.
In Friday's often tense 90-minute rhetorical battle, Bush accused Kerry of "naive and dangerous" views on North Korea and Iran, defended the March 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, and said his rival was as steady as a weathervane.
"I can see why people think that he changes position quite often, because he does," said Bush. "He said he thought Saddam Hussein was a grave threat, and now he said it was a mistake to remove Saddam Hussein from power."
Kerry hammered away at anemic job creation on Bush's watch and a report released this week by US weapons inspectors saying Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction.
Asked by an audience member to answer Bush's charges he is "wishy-washy," Kerry said: "The president didn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so he's really turned his campaign into a weapon of mass deception."
The final debate is to be held in Tempe, Arizona, on Wednesday but analysts said there were unlikely to be any major surprises as the campaign clock ticks down.
"I think it's basically a question of which (candidate) does the organizing and gets out his vote, because there are virtually no undecided voters any more," said Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution.
"I think this thing is just as tight as a tick," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "It's ending up just where we thought it would all along."