"Senior officials in the Bush reelection campaign are expressing growing confidence that the president has weathered weeks of rocky national security news -- and may even have benefited from it -- amid polls indicating that President Bush is holding steady against" Sen. John Kerry, the Boston Globe reports.
Despite weeks of bad news, Bush "appears to have held his ground. His advisers attribute the durability of his standing in part to an aggressive $40 million advertising blitz last month and his overwhelming head-start in fund-raising, which have helped neutralize negative events as long as the overall focus is on national security."