HICAGO - With Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush spending yesterday preparing for their second debate, it was left to their running mates to carry the message on the campaign trail.
Republican Dick Cheney lashed out at the Clinton-Gore administration for failing to maintain a strong military, saying it would be ''a horrendous mistake'' to assume that the armed forces will diminish in importance during the 21st century.
Speaking at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., where Winston Churchill declared in 1946 that an ''iron curtain'' had descended on Eastern Europe, Cheney said, ''We have to assume that, sooner or later, we are once again going to need a robust and strong US military.''
Cheney, a former defense secretary, said he called former President Reagan after the Persian Gulf War to thank him for building up the military in the 1980s, a decision Cheney said paved the way for the victories during that conflict. ''I doubt any future secretary of defense will be calling the Clinton-Gore administration to thank them for what they did to the military,'' Cheney told the crowd of about 300.
Cheney also pressed the GOP plans for Medicare, Social Security, and veterans. He said the country's prosperity should be used to benefit what he called the ''greatest generation'' of Americans.
Responding to Gore's characterization of Bush's proposals on those issues as ''risky schemes,'' Cheney said, ''the only risky scheme is to do nothing at all, which frankly has been the record for the last eight years.''
Later, as he prepared to watch the presidential debate from a Chicago suburb, Cheney told a group of seniors that the country owes a ''special obligation'' to the generation that included his parents. He said Bush will embark on a ''greatest generation tour,'' focusing on improving Social Security, Medicare, and veterans' benefits.
After setting a personal record when he pulled in $3.2 million for the Democratic Party at a lavish Silicon Valley fund-raising dinner Tuesday night, Joseph Lieberman arrived late yesterday at Orenco Elementary School, in Hillsboro, Ore.
The late start meant he did not have time to read stories to a first-grade class, but promised to return to read ''Hattie and the Fox'' if he is elected. Asked by one first-grader about his favorite children's book, Lieberman quipped that he was ''tempted'' to say ''The Very Hungry Caterpillar'' - the answer Bush gave to the question, even though the book was published after he graduated from college. After discussing in detail ''The Lorax'' by Dr. Seuss, Lieberman won the support of one girl, who said she planned to vote for him.
