09:21 AM EDT on Tuesday, September 20, 2005

BY SCOTT MacKAY
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, emerging agressively yesterday from a self-imposed hiatus on sharp personal criticism of President Bush, took out his stiletto and skewered Mr. Bush as "incompetent," out of touch with average Americans and responsible for the failures in the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

Journal photo / Connie Grosch

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry critcizes President Bush in a speech yesterday before 900 at Brown's Salomon Center.

"Katrina stripped away any image of competence and exposed to all the true heart and nature of this administration," Kerry told an overflow crowd of almost 900 in Salomon Center at Brown University, in his most pointed attack on Mr. Bush since last year's campaign. "This horrifying disaster has shown Americans at their best and their government at its worst."

"The truth is, for four-and-a-half years, real-life choices have been replaced by ideological agenda, substance by spin, governance always second place to politics," said Kerry.

Kerry received a hero's welcome from an overwhelmingly student audience at Brown, a liberal campus in navy-blue Rhode Island, where many students worked on his unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign against Mr. Bush. In a question-and-answer session after the speech, Kerry drew not one hostile query in 45 minutes.

In an interview, Kerry said yesterday's speech was a signal that he intends to become more partisan and speak out more forcefully against the Bush administration as the 2006 midterm election cycle begins in earnest.

Kerry spoke as part of Brown's Licht Lecture series, which honors the memory of former Rhode Island governor Frank Licht, a 1938 Brown graduate.

It was also an address that had obvious implications for the 2008 presidential race; Kerry says he is keeping open his option of seeking his party's nomination for the presidency again, but for now he is more focused on helping Democrats win House and Senate seats next year.

After the speech, Kerry attended a fundraiser for his political action committee, Keeping America's Promise.

Michael Brown, who quit under fire as the Federal Emergency Management Agency's director, exemplified the administration's failures over the past five years, Kerry said.

Using the nickname Mr. Bush used for Brown, Kerry said, "Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq, what George Tenet is to slam-dunk intelligence, what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad, what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy, what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning, what Tom DeLay is to ethics and what George Bush is to 'Mission Accomplished' and 'Wanted Dead or Alive' . . . The bottom line is simple: The 'we'll do whatever it takes' administration doesn't have what it takes to get the job done."

Bremer was the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq while Wolfowitz served as deputy defense secretary until becoming president of the World Bank.

Kerry hammered Mr. Bush's policies on everything from hurricane response to U.S. military involvement in Iraq to labor and environmental policies.

Kerry compared Mr. Bush, who has acknowledged past alcohol abuse, as being in "denial," a term used in alcohol treatment to describe an alcoholic's refusal to take responsibility for his or her actions.

"I know the president went on national television last week and accepted responsibility for Washington's poor response to Katrina," said Kerry. "That's admirable. And it's a first. As they say, the first step towards recovery is to get out of denial. But don't hold your breath hoping acceptance of responsibility will become a habit for this administration."

Katrina, Kerry asserted, had provided an "accountability moment" for the administration.

"This is about the broader pattern of incompetence and negligence that Katrina exposed and, beyond that, a truly systemic effort to distort and disable the people's government and devote it to the interests of the privileged and the powerful," he said.

Kerry also assserted that the administration is pursuing a political agenda in its plan for rebuilding the Gulf Coast. "The plan they're designing for the Gulf Coast turns the region into a vast laboratory for right-wing ideological experiments," he said, citing private school vouchers, subsidies to business and, "believe it or not yet another round of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us."

Kerry was accompanied by his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, and his daughter, Vanessa Kerry, a Harvard University Medical student. Kerry's other daughter, Alexandra, is a Brown alumna, but she was not present yesterday.

Kerry said he refrained from harsh criticism of Mr. Bush for almost a year after his election loss because he did not want to be seen as a sore loser. "I wanted to get beyond the statute of limitations on sour grapes," he said in an interview.

But a summer of traveling the country and raising money for his political action committee have convinced him, he said in an interview, to speak out more forcefully.

As is often the case with Kerry, he appeared a bit wooden while reading his prepared speech, but become more animated and passionate as he stepped from behind the lectern to take questions from the students.

Kerry called Iraq a "low-grade civil war right now" but said the United States "just can't walk away." He said the mistakes made by Bush administration policies have put the president in a "box that is getting tighter and a hole that is getting deeper and that this administration is still digging."

Tracey Schmitt, press secretary for the Republican National Party, dismissed Kerry's criticism as "armchair quarterbacking," adding: "The American people have pulled together during a difficult time and Democrats' efforts to politicize this tragedy are unsavory at best."

When a reporter joked in an interview yesterday that Kerry was president of the "United Blue States of America," the senator declined to play along. "I'm not into dividing us by reds and blues. I think we've got to find a way to unite people."