Bush tries to change focus of election

NEW YORK - An unpopular war and 1.1 million lost jobs is enough to kill a presidency, so President Bush tried Thursday night to make the election about something else: himself and his leadership style.

"Even when we don't agree," he told an anxious and divided nation, "you know what I believe and where I stand."

He sought to make a virtue of his differences with half or more of the electorate, and cast Democratic rival John Kerry as a pandering, indecisive liberal unfit for wartime leadership.