Even as three weeks of intense media interest appeared to be waning Thursday, the campaigns of President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry fired their latest salvos over Kerry's Vietnam War service, the television advertisement that questioned it and the larger issue of controlling independent campaign ads.
Bush's campaign announced that it was prepared to go to court, along with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), in an attempt to force federal elections officials to rein in groups that have slammed Bush and challenged Kerry's medals and antiwar activity.
Such vitriolic television ads can only be curtailed by assuring that outside organizations follow the same contribution and reporting limits as the candidates, Bush campaign executives said Thursday.
Kerry and his aides renewed their calls on Bush to denounce an ad that said Kerry did not deserve medals he was awarded for bravery and wounds suffered while serving as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam.
The continued reverberations from the ad by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth came as both camps said they wanted to focus on other matters.
The Bush campaign said it was focused on next week's Republican National Convention and showcasing the president's record, particularly on national security and foreign affairs.
Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said the GOP would also emphasize Kerry's 20-year record in the Senate, since the Democratic presidential nominee barely mentioned it at the party's convention last month.
"In New York, we won't spend all our time looking backward. We will talk about the new challenges we face as a nation and new policies to address them," Gillespie said. "The American people want to know where the candidates stand and how each will lead our country."
Kerry talked to Minnesota voters Thursday about the 1.4 million Americans who lost healthcare coverage in the last year and pledged to clear the way for importing cheaper drugs from abroad -- part of his campaign's bid to refocus on domestic issues, where polls show he holds an advantage.
One Kerry campaign operative predicted that the furor over the Vietnam ad was waning, saying, "Two days from now, a lot of these stories are going to start fizzling out."
But the issue had not been spent Thursday, and it was McCain who remained the focus of much of the back-and-forth.
