Walter Mondale, trying to stop President Reagan from invoking Democratic heroes such as John Kennedy, unveiled a 1960 letter Reagan wrote to Richard Nixon that likened Kennedy's policies to those of Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler.
In response, Reagan conceded Tuesday that the 24-year-old letter was accurate but said he was 'pleasantly surprised' at Kennedy 'toughness' as the 35th president.
Mondale released the letter at an enthusiastic rally of 10,000 students at the University of Michigan and called on Reagan to stop quoting Kennedy.
'We've had this thing all during the campaign,' Mondale said. 'He would have the American people believe he was John Kennedy's best friend. This kind of expression reminds the American people of who Ronald Reagan is.'
The letter, signed 'Ronnie Reagan,' was sent to Nixon during the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy campaign -- when Reagan headed a 'Democrats for Nixon' group.
Mondale aides said the campaign received a tip about the two-page letter from a handwriting analyst who found it while researching Nixon's pre-presidential papers in the Los Angeles Federal Archives and Records Center.
The letter said, in part: 'One last thought -- shouldn't some one tag Mr. Kennedy's bold new imaginative program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marx -- first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother to us all. Hitler called his 'state socialism' and way before him it 'was benevolent monarchy.''
Confronted with the charge, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said Reagan said the letter 'appears to be accurate' but said it was written before the 1960 election.
Speakes said Reagan was 'pleasantly surprised to find the difference between Kennedy the candidate and Kennedy the president,' and lauded Kennedy's 'toughness' during the Cuban missile crisis.
But Mondale, by then in Chicago, rejected the explanation.
If Reagan thought Kennedy's policies were akin to those of Marx and Hitler, 'How can he ever say that they would change in a way that would become acceptable?,' he said.
Reagan stumped in Seattle and Portland, Ore., but hecklers interrupted his speeches with shouts of 'liar' and 'warmonger.'
James Lake, Reagan's campaign spokesman, said the demonstrators 'reflect a certain level of frustration and panic on the part of local Mondale supporters.'
Told about the heckling, Mondale said he would do 'everything I can' to prevent his supporters from interfering with the president's speeches.
Campaigning in Mondale's home state of Minnesota, Vice President George Bush traded city pinstripes for country plaid and posed milking a cow.
Touting the Reagan economic recovery over Democratic alternatives that he branded as the past cause of high inflation, higher interest rates and an unpopular grain embargo, Bush led cheers for the GOP ticket as he barnstormed the upper Midwest.
In San Diego, Geraldine Ferraro questioned whether President Reagan is in charge at the White House, saying he 'does not understand' foreign and defense issues.
'He does not understand these foreign policy issues and national defense issues,' Ferraro said. 'He is not on top of them.
'If he really isn't in charge after four years in the White House, what is going to happen the next four years?' she asked.
