Bush tops Kerry in poll by 8 points

Sen. John Kerry faces substantial obstacles in his bid to unseat President Bush, with voters saying he has not laid out a case for why he wants to be president and expressing strong concern about his ability to manage an international crisis, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

Less than seven weeks before Election Day, Americans continue to think that the nation is heading in the wrong direction and are distressed about how Bush has handled the economy. Yet the president, apparently lifted as much by what Kerry has done wrong as by what Bush has done right in the campaign, has an eight-point lead among registered voters over Kerry, the poll found.

In one particularly troublesome sign for Kerry, a majority of voters said he is spending too much time attacking Bush and talking about the past rather than explaining what he would do as president. By contrast, half of the registered voters said Bush had offered a clear vision of what he wants to do in a second term.

That finding, combined with a rising unfavorable view of Kerry, underlines the complicated challenge the senator confronts as he tries to attack Bush without alienating voters put off by negative campaigning. Kerry's problems have apparently been deepened by the relentless attacks on his Vietnam War record by a group of Vietnam veterans with ties to Bush's campaign. Three-quarters of respondents said they were aware of the advertisements produced by the group, many of which involved charges that were unsupported by official records; of those, 33 percent called the charges mostly true.

More than 60 percent of respondents said Kerry was either "hiding something" or "mostly lying" in discussing his service in Vietnam. At the same time, 71 percent said that Bush was "hiding something" or "mostly lying" in talking about his Vietnam era service in the National Guard, which has been the subject of news accounts raising questions about how he got a coveted out-of-combat guard assignment and whether he fulfilled the required service.

Sixty percent of respondents said they did not have confidence in Kerry to deal wisely with an international crisis; that is a jump from 52 percent in June. By contrast, 48 percent said they were uneasy with Bush's ability to manage a foreign crisis. For all that, there are signs that the election remains competitive, and that the upcoming debates could prove pivotal to Kerry's hopes. Respondents said they were unhappy with Bush's handling of the economy and of Iraq and said his policies had increased the cost of prescription drugs and decreased the number of jobs.

About 80 percent of respondents said that Bush was either "hiding something" or "mostly lying" in talking about the war.