On convention eve, Obama rips McCain

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. – Barack Obama lashed out Sunday at John McCain, saying the Republican “doesn’t really have an economic plan” and his party’s approach on foreign policy of “talking tough and acting dumb is not a way to keep you safe and secure.”

McCain, meanwhile, allowed surrogates and negative ads to do the attacking as he did no campaigning.


At a barbecue at a local park here, Obama took an unusually strident tone towards McCain, now a fixture in the Democrat’s speech as a country club Republican who doesn’t know how many properties he owns and defines “rich” as those making $5 million.

Obama got carried away at one point — and his language turned a bit salty, by his campaign trail standards, at least.

“If we can spend $10-12 billion a month in Iraq, we sure as hell can pay $10-12 billion right here in the United States of America to put people back to work,” he told about 300 supporters, many with young children.

Obama paused. Campaign staff members twisted their heads around, looking for confirmation of what they just heard.

“I apologize, by the way. I usually say ‘heck,’ especially after church,” said Obama, who had emerged an hour earlier from Sunday services at First Lutheran Church here, where the sermon focused on humility. “That sort of slipped out. Sorry, kids.”

It was an angrier, more exasperated turn for a candidate better known for a cool and occasionally detached delivery. Some supporters and political observers have been agitating for fiery performances from him on the trail, and he showed signs of such an approach Sunday.

Depicting McCain as out of touch with working families, Obama hit populist notes, saying he was the candidate for the middle class, “the teachers and nurses and the cops and firefighters.” McCain, he added, “doesn’t really have an economic plan, and everybody sort of knows it.”

“So you know who is fighting for you,” Obama said. “It’s not the folks who are going to be meeting in Minnesota. It’s the folks who are meeting in Denver.”

Foreign policy may be McCain’s claim to the presidency, Obama said, but “talking tough and acting dumb is not a way to keep you safe and secure. We need somebody who talks tough who is going to act smart and be tough.”

With Obama dominating the news cycle — and set to do so for the next four days — McCain has chosen a strategy of using surrogates and daily campaign ad rollouts to counterpunch, rather than making public statements himself.

After three days with virtually no public appearances, McCain emerged from his Sedona hideaway and drove 90 minutes in his seven-car motorcade to Phoenix. It was a standard Sunday schedule for many families — coffee run, church, Arizona Diamondbacks ballgame.

The service at North Phoenix Baptist was not without political color. Pastor Dan Yeary showed a clip of last weekend’s presidential candidates forum at Saddleback with the Rev. Rick Warren, broadcasting on big screens in the church the question each candidate answered about his greatest moral failure. McCain’s pastor did not take sides on each answer, but the Arizona senator received polite applause from his home state congregation.

As McCain attended the baseball game, appearing on the Jumbotron next to Olympic beach volleyball champ Misty May-Trainor, his campaign sought to turn against Obama his selection of Sen. Joe Biden as a running mate.

“In his first event since choosing Joe Biden as his vice presidential nominee, Barack Obama attacked many of Joe Biden’s own positions on national security issues. We look forward to the debate between Joe Biden and Barack Obama over whether or not Senator Obama is qualified to be commander in chief,” said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers.

For the second time in as many days, the McCain campaign rolled out an attack ad, this one showing clips of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton criticizing Obama during the Democratic primary campaign. A female narrator says: “She won millions of votes, but isn’t on the ticket. Why? For speaking the truth.”

The former first lady, who has praised Biden's selection, responded with a statement from her spokeswoman Kathleen Strand.

"Hillary Clinton's support of Barack Obama is clear," Strand said. "She has said repeatedly that Barack Obama and she share a commitment to changing the direction of the country, getting us out of Iraq and expanding access to health care. John McCain doesn't. It's interesting how those remarks didn't make it into his ad."

Obama campaigned separately from Biden, who returned to Delaware ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Before Obama boarded his plane from Eau Claire to Chicago, he surprised reporters by breaking from his security and approaching the media scrum to talk up his running mate. “The conversations we've been having over the last couple of days make me absolutely convinced he is the right man for the job,” Obama said.

The McCain campaign is expected to continue daily ad rollouts during the Democratic National Convention, and spokesman Tucker Bounds said the theme is that the election is “about a choice, not a destiny.”

But for the first half of the week, McCain will keep his appearances to a minimum, with two California fundraisers scheduled, a taping of NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" and a speech to a veterans group in Phoenix.

Kady reported from Phoenix.