"Under fire to shape up his presidential campaign, Democratic challenger John F. Kerry on Sunday tapped two veteran party strategists from Boston to assume top roles in an operation that has been criticized by Democratic allies for allowing President Bush to regain the initiative in the battle for the White House.

Campaign officials said John Sasso, who has been running general election operations at the Democratic National Committee, will become the senior Kerry adviser aboard the candidate's traveling charter until the election. Michael Whouley, who helped rescue Kerry's campaign in Iowa during the nomination battle, will take over Sasso's responsibilities at the DNC, reprising the role he played for Al Gore four years ago.

Kerry advisers described the moves as long planned and part of an overall effort to put the strongest possible team together for the final 60 days of the campaign. But the decisions, which caught some staff members at the campaign and DNC by surprise, were seen by other Democrats as an acknowledgment by Kerry that his campaign needed help after the most difficult month he has endured since winning the nomination last spring.

Those Democrats said Kerry had been slow to respond to criticisms and that the campaign appeared to be sluggish in some of its decision-making. They predicted that the changes would bring greater focus to the Democratic campaign.

Kerry advisers said they planned a much more aggressive campaign in the final two months, with Kerry and vice presidential nominee John Edwards leading the attack, and that restructuring at the campaign and the DNC will help in drawing a sharper contrast with Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Since his party's convention in Boston in late July, Kerry has been on a downward slide, attacked by a group of Swift boat veterans over his service in Vietnam and his antiwar protests when he returned to the United States. He was also hurt by several statements that sowed confusion about where he stands on the war in Iraq.

Bush took advantage of both problems and then used the Republican convention in New York last week to hammer Kerry as unreliable on national defense and to present himself as the candidate best able to keep the country safe against terrorism.

The first two polls taken after Bush's convention, by Time and Newsweek, showed an immediate boost, with Kerry trailing by 11 percentage points in both -- the largest deficit either candidate has suffered in the campaign. Kerry campaign officials said their internal polls also put Bush in the lead, but by a narrower margin.

Some of Bush's gains likely will recede quickly, given the normal rhythms of presidential campaigns, but Kerry's performance in August unnerved many Democrats outside the campaign, who groused privately and sometimes publicly that the candidate needed to make a significant mid-course correction to counter Bush's gains.

'This is a critical decision because John Sasso has enormous credibility, and all of a sudden the center of power moves from the ground to the plane, where decisions can be made quickly,' said Tony Coelho, who managed Gore's 2000 campaign for a time. 'It tells me we have an independent thinker with Kerry who can get things done.'

'We need someone on the plane who has a relationship with him and is an adult,' said a senior campaign official, who asked for anonymity to talk more freely about strategy. 'You need heavier fire power here. There is no room for error in days to come, and this takes the pressure off of headquarters.'

Communications director Stephanie Cutter said Mary Beth Cahill, who was brought in last fall at a time when Kerry's candidacy was floundering, would remain in overall control of the campaign, with Sasso adding a heavyweight voice from the campaign trail. Whouley, who like Sasso has a long relationship with Kerry, has broad experience in state-by-state targeting, Electoral College strategy and voter mobilization. Sasso was a top adviser to then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who ran for president in 1988.

'This is the home stretch, and John Kerry wants more of the best and brightest,' Cutter said.

But other Democrats said the moves would inevitably result in some shifts in power, particularly with Sasso at Kerry's side on the campaign trail.

The addition of Sasso and Whouley came a few weeks after two other senior Democratic strategists joined the campaign -- Joe Lockhart, White House press secretary in the Clinton administration, and Joel Johnson, another veteran of the Clinton White House. The two were tapped to strengthen the campaign's communications operation.

In a previously reported move, Howard Wolfson, a former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, will join the DNC as senior adviser for communications.

On the Sunday talk shows, Kerry aides and other Democrats sought to play down Bush's post-convention bounce. 'We always knew that August was going to be the toughest month for us,' Cahill said on CBS's 'Face the Nation.' She cited the ads by the group known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which she described as 'baseless lies,' and Bush campaign ads attacking Kerry. 'But from here on in, we're in the general election.'

The personnel moves came as Kerry took a break on Sunday to celebrate his daughter Alexandra's birthday in the Pittsburgh area, where his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, has long had a home. The Massachusetts senator tried out his new strategy in Ohio of trying to shift the discussion from national security and his Vietnam record to the economy and jobs.

On Monday, the candidate will start Labor Day in Pittsburgh at a 'front porch' discussion -- one of 50 being held by campaign surrogates across the country -- and then spend a busy day flying to three more battleground states -- West Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina.

Heinz Kerry arrived back in Pittsburgh early Sunday morning, after a brief visit to an Iowa hospital because of stomach pains. A campaign spokesman said she was doing well Sunday." (Lois Romano and Dan Balz, Washington Post, September 6, 2004)

Balz reported from Washington.