Obama keeps up criticism of McCain
Posted: Saturday, May 17, 2008 6:27 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
Security
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones
ROSEBURG, OR -- During a campaign stop here today, Obama said McCain and President Bush don’t understand foreign policy and urged voters to support McCain if they want to continue the Bush Administration’s approach to diplomacy and health care.
Both Democratic candidates and the Democratic National Committee have sought to link McCain to the president -- and his historically low approval ratings -- in voters’ minds.
The Illinois senator again criticized Bush for his remarks in Israel about appeasers, arguing Bush’s foreign policy has not worked and that McCain’s would be the same. “If you agree that we’ve had a great foreign policy over the last four, eight years, then you should vote for John McCain, you shouldn’t vote for me," he told the audience at a town hall in a high school cafeteria. "The fact that they are trying to make this into an issue indicates they don't understand how foreign policy works."
As he has begun to do more and more lately, Obama justified his stance on negotiating with dictators by comparing it to that of past presidents. "If George Bush and John McCain have a problem with direct diplomacy, led by the president of the United States, then they can explain why they have a problem with John F. Kennedy, because that’s what he did with Khrushchev. Or Ronald Reagan, 'cause that’s what he did with Gorbachev. Or Richard Nixon 'cause that’s what they did with Mao. That’s exactly the kind of diplomacy we need to keep us safe.”
The McCain campaign said Obama had the wrong approach to dealing with "the leaders of rogue nations." "Senator Obama is missing the point, it’s the ‘unconditional, that’s unacceptable," spokesman Tucker Bounds said in an emailed statement. "Barack Obama’s pledge to unconditionally bring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the world stage isn’t ‘new politics. It’s incredibly weak judgment and reveals why Americans will elect John McCain’s record of experience, and tested leadership. We are a nation rooted in a history of sacrifice and achievement, not in candidates who offer nothing but lofty rhetoric and campaign promises.”
At the town hall, Obama poked fun at the speech McCain gave this week in which he envisioned having won the Iraq war by 2013 and withdrawn most troops. “I won’t just predict that this war might come to an end years from now like John McCain did a couple of days ago," he began. "I won’t just divine that it might end in 2013. I will end it. I will end this war within the first 16 months that I take office as president.”
Health care and the environment
Obama also sought to link Bush and McCain on the issue of health care. "What do we get from John McCain?," he asked. "He wants to give you the failed Bush health-care policies for another four years. Essentially his plan is we’re gonna dismantle the employer-based system and give everybody a tax break and then see if you can fend for yourself in the marketplace."
He said both his plan and Hillary Clinton's would provide affordable health care to every single American who wants it.
Obama also said McCain had not offered plans for fixing Social Security or helping to make college more affordable, and he tried to use humor to punch holes in McCain’s record on environmental issues in response to a question about what he would do to combat global warming.
"John McCain -- for him to come to Oregon as an environmental president but his big strategy is to do more drilling and to have a gas-tax holiday for three months -- that’s a phony solution,” he said. "John McCain has consistently been opposed to fuel efficiency standards, to raising fuel efficiency standards on cars. How is he gonna meet any of these targets? Maybe he’s kind of imagining it the way he did imagining get outing (sic) out of the war in Iraq. You know, we, we, we need somebody with a plan.”
