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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/07/politics/campaign/07REPU.html?ei=5062&en=2b0daab7e3429b75&ex=1087272000&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position=Even some Democrats said they were concerned that the death of Mr. Reagan would provide a welcome, if perhaps temporary, tonic for a president who had been going through tough political times.
"I've been dreading this every election year for three cycles," said Jim Jordan, Mr. Kerry's former campaign manager. "Bush has totally attached himself to Ronald Reagan. He's going to turn Reagan into his own verifier."
Still, Mr. Kerry's aides said they believed Mr. Reagan's death would be, as a political matter, far in the background by the summer. And Republicans said there were risks in too conspicuously invoking Mr. Reagan as part of Mr. Bush's campaign.
Advisers to Mr. Bush said they had not determined how prominently Mr. Bush should identify his presidency with Mr. Reagan, whether Mr. Reagan's image should be incorporated in Mr. Bush's advertisements and whether Nancy Reagan might appear on Mr. Bush's behalf in the fall.
Some Republicans said the images of a forceful Mr. Reagan giving dramatic speeches on television provided a less-than-welcome contrast with Mr. Bush's own appearances these days, and that it was not in Mr. Bush's interest to encourage such comparisons. That concern was illustrated on Sunday, one Republican said, by televised images of Mr. Reagan's riveting speech in Normandy commemorating D-Day in 1984, followed by Mr. Bush's address at a similar ceremony on Sunday.
"Reagan showed what high stature that a president can have — and my fear is that Bush will look diminished by comparison," said one Republican sympathetic to Mr. Bush, who did not want to be quoted by name criticizing the president.
Another senior Republican expressed concern that by identifying too closely with Mr. Reagan, Mr. Bush risked running a campaign that looked to the past, which this adviser described as a recipe for a loss.
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