Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, visiting the site of one of the most famous political debates in US history, planned to challenge President George W. Bush on Saturday to a "real discussion about America's future" in a monthly series of debates.
Kerry, already engaged in a running exchange of negative ads with Bush eight months before the November election, planned to deliver the challenge at the site of the historic Abraham Lincoln-Stephen Douglas debates in Quincy, Illinois.
That series of 1858 senatorial debates between Douglas and Lincoln, who lost the Senate election but won the presidency two years later, is legendary in US political history for elevating crucial issues like slavery and states' rights to the front of the US political agenda.
"Surely, if the attack ads can start now at least we can agree to start a real discussion about America's future," Kerry said in remarks prepared for delivery in Quincy, Illinois, later on Saturday.
Bush and Kerry have exchanged negative ads in the past few days, with Bush criticising Kerry by name for planning to raise taxes and threatening to weaken US security and Kerry firing back at his "misleading" accusations.
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