National News
Confident Obama takes presidential tone in talk of post-election plans
The Guardian,UK - Barack Obama began to speak openly and in detail about the post-election transition period from George Bush's presidency for the first time yesterday, opening himself up to charges of complacency.
As most polls showed the Democratic candidate's lead over his Republican rival John McCain still growing, Obama held a meeting in Richmond, Virginia, to discuss with senior national security advisers the foreign policy challenges he would face as president. Bucking the trend, one poll, conducted by Associated Press, showed McCain cutting back Obama's 7% lead three weeks ago to 1%, on 44% to 43%.
Obama's comments mark a significant change in the campaign, switching from rhetoric to a more presidential tone.
Although Obama added the caveat that "I don't want to get too far ahead of myself," his comments reflected a sense of confidence that his campaign team is finding it hard to hide. At a press conference after the national security meeting, he said that although he had been almost single-mindedly focused on the economy, he had plans ready for Iraq, Afghanistan and other foreign policy problems.
He spoke about having teams in place to deal with foreign and economic policy during the awkward transitional period between November 4 and the inauguration on January 20.
Interviewed yesterday, Obama said a smooth transition was essential to make sure America's enemies did not take advantage of a shift in administrations.
In another sign of looking beyond the November 4 election, he welcomed a White House-organised international summit on the economic crisis planned for November 15. With Bush as a lame-duck president and Obama as possibly the president-in-waiting, the Democratic candidate would be a key figure. "I am happy today that the White House announced a summit that provides an opportunity to advance the kind of cooperation I called for last month," he said. "America must lead and other nations must be part of the solution too." He refused to be drawn into what role he would play at the summit if he was elected president. He said his economic team was already in constant touch with the treasury secretary, Henry Paulson.
To avoid sounding too presumptuous, he said: "Even though the election will have taken place and there will be a new president-elect, we are still going to have one president at a time until January 20, until the new president is sworn in."
It is risky for Obama to speak so openly about the post-election period with 13 days still to go of the campaign. While his appearance surrounded by national security experts from the Clinton administration and Washington-based thinktanks can make him appear more presidential, it also opens him up to accusations by McCain that he has become too cocky.
McCain told a rally yesterday before Obama's meeting that his rival was behaving as if he was already president to the extent that he would be making an address to the nation next.
The meeting with his national security advisers and a rally planned for Leesburg, Virginia, last night will be among Obama's last events before heading for Hawaii for two days to visit the grandmother who helped raise him and who is seriously ill.
The meeting in Richmond and the subsequent press conference were designed partly to try to deflect comments made by his vice-presidential running-mate, Joe Biden, on Sunday. Biden, who is famously gaffe-prone, said that Obama as president could expect to face international crises as America's opponents sought to test him.
Both McCain and his running-mate, Sarah Palin, jumped on this, saying America's enemies perceived Obama as weak and would seek to test him.
Obama responded: "His core point was the next president is going to be tested regardless of who it is."
Palin too found herself on the defensive yesterday when an Associated Press investigation found what appeared to be a cover-up in relation to expenses claimed as governor of Alaska. As was reported last month, Palin charged the state more than $21,000 to cover the cost of her children travelling with her. But AP found that documents appear to have been amended afterwards to specify that the trips were on official business.
Palin: 'Far-left wing of the Democrat Party’ could takeover
LAKEWOOD, Ohio (CNN) – With her voice beginning to crack on this final marathon day of campaigning, Sarah Palin promised an audience in Ohio: “We will win!”
“You can just feel it here,” she said at a rally in the Cleveland suburbs. “You can just feel it here in Ohio, victory's coming, we can do this, we can win, we can win Ohio. And we must win for you.”
The crowd chanted “We will win! We will win!” throughout her remarks. At one point, Palin warned with urgency: “We must win.”
“We must win,” she said, “because Ohio, the far-left wing of the Democrat Party, not mainstream Democrat ideology, the values, the planks in the platform of the Democrat Party. It's the far-left wing of the party is getting ready to take over the entire federal government.”
Palin again accused Barack Obama of wanting to bankrupt the coal industry, citing an interview the Democrat gave to the San Francisco Chronicle in January in which he discussed his “aggressive” cap-and-trade proposal to limit carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.
“Just yesterday, revelation, an audiotape surfaces,” Palin argued, despite the fact that the Obama interview has been posted online for nine months. “People are starting to hear in his own words what Sen. Obama’s intention is for the coal industry. You got to hear this tape. You’re going to hear Obama saying it, talking about bankruptcy, bankruptcy there in the coal industry. He’s explaining all this to the San Francisco Chronicle, and he says …”
Palin was interrupted by an audience member who shouted “Liberal!”
She continued: “And there must be something about San Francisco and he because it’s like I heard on Fox News today, it’s like a truth serum where when he’s there, he seems to be more candid, and remember it was there that he talked about, there you go, the bitter clingers, the cling-ons, all of us, I guess, you know holding on to religion and guns and, um, so something about he being there in San Francisco.”
Obama says attacks on wife 'completely out of bounds'
CNN – Looking back at his two-year marathon for the presidency, Barack Obama told CBS he was most angered by "right-wing" attacks on his wife, Michelle, and said many of them were "completely out of bounds."
"I do believe there is a Republican or right-wing media outlet, or set of media outlets, that went after my wife for a while in a way that I thought was just completely out of bounds," Obama told CBS' Katie Couric in an interview that aired Monday morning.
"Frankly, I would never have considered or expected my allies to do something comparable to the spouse of an opponent. I just feel like family are civilians."
Mrs. Obama took particular heat from conservative circles for comments she made during the primary season, when she said that for the first time in her adult life "I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback." Those comments were highlighted by several Republican state party chapters in an effort to paint the potential first lady as angry, leading the Democratic presidential nominee to call on them to "lay off my wife" in an ABC interview in May.
Mrs. Obama was also been labeled "Obama's baby mama," by Fox News and "Mrs. Grievance" by the conservative National Review. Some conservative outlets also buzzed last summer about the possibility of a tape, which has never appeared, that showed her using the word "whitey" from the pulpit of Trinity United Church. The Obama campaign said Mrs. Obama had never uttered the word and that no tape existed.
"I just feel like family are civilians, and they don't sign up for this stuff… They really should be bystanders in this process, even if they're campaigning for you," Obama told CBS in the interview that aired Monday.
Protesters make noise at Biden event
TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CNN) – Just two days after completing a three-day bus tour of central and southern Florida, Joe Biden is back in the state for three events Sunday, this time in the north as part of campaign’s final battleground state push before Tuesday’s election.
On the campus of Florida State University Sunday morning, Biden continued to deliver the campaign’s ‘closing arguments’ that include a plea to supporters to reach out to Republicans after the election in order to bridge the partisan divide.
For the first time since being named the Democratic vice presidential nominee, a small group of McCain and Palin supporters tried to interrupt the Delaware senator’s remarks from the public sidewalk about 150 yards from the podium. Their chants inaudible through a megaphone, they took to using the device’s siren to disrupt.
Biden referred to “the people in the parking lot” four times, using them as an example of those that Democrats will have to reach out to after Tuesday.
“I mean it literally. Not a joke. I know you find some of that obnoxious,” said Biden. “We gotta end this. Somebody's got to be big enough to stand up and end this.”
There’s also a practical reason, Biden argued, legislation won't be able to pass without bi-partisan support.
“You think we're going to get education reform? You think we're going to re-establish and end this war and re-establish our place in the world without getting a significant portion of Republicans to agree with us as well? No one party can do this.”
Barack Obama and Biden have been targeting McCain and Palin over the past two days for the endorsement they received from Dick Cheney on Saturday, asking if any more proof is needed that this Republican ticket would be a continuation of the Bush-Cheney administration.
“Folks, John McCain and Sarah Palin can have Dick Cheney’s endorsement,” said Biden, We’ll settle for people like Warren Buffett and Colin Powell.”
After Sunday in Florida, Biden continues the swing state tour in the campaign’s final hours, heading to Missouri Monday morning, Ohio in the afternoon and Philadelphia at night. After voting at home in Wilmington Tuesday morning, he will visit at least one more swing state before joining Barack Obama in Chicago.
