John McCain told voters Tuesday his White House rival Barack Obama was unprepared to handle a national security crisis, citing the US-Russia standoff in 1962 that put the world on the brink of nuclear war.
Struggling to overcome rival Barack Obama's strong lead in the polls with just 14 days left in the epic presidential race, former fighter pilot McCain emphasized that the next president "won't have time to get used to the office."
"I sat in the cockpit on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise off of Cuba. I had a target," McCain said, referring to the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis.
"I know how close we came to a nuclear war and I will not be a president that needs to be tested. I have been tested. Senator Obama has not."
The Republican senator warned voters at a rally in Moon Township, Pennsylvania that the United States faces "many challenges here at home, and many enemies abroad in this dangerous world."
"We know Senator Obama would not have the right response," he said.
McCain, trailing Obama by seven percent in national voter surveys, according to an average by independent RealClearPolitics.com, acknowledged that he was "a few points down" in the polls and castigated the national media for writing him off.
He told supporters "nothing is inevitable" and vowed to continue to fight for hard-working Americans.
He kept up his attack on Obama's economic policies, casting the Illinois senator as a shifty, job-killing socialist bent on "redistributing wealth."
"Senator Obama's more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the pie than growing the pie," McCain said.
In Florida Obama shot back, accusing McCain of turning a blind eye to the financial crisis and offering up out-dated ideas for fixing the country's troubled economy.
"The financial crisis that states, businesses and families are facing didn't just spring up full-blown overnight," the Democratic candidate said.
"This has been a long time coming, and the warning signs have been very clear, but while President Bush and Senator McCain were ready to move heaven and earth to address the crisis on Wall Street, President Bush has failed to address the crisis on Main Street," Obama said.
McCain "has failed to fully acknowledge it. Instead of common sense solutions, month after month, they've offered little more than willful ignorance, wishful thinking, and outdated ideology."
He also accused McCain of just making "stuff" up as time runs out before election day.
He hammered McCain over the Republican's claims that he attacked "Joe the plumber," an Ohio voter who has become an emblem of the middle class tax debate.
"It was really amazing, he's decided to fabricate this notion that I've been attacking Joe the plumber," Obama said, after noting he had watched a speech by McCain earlier in the day on television.
"John McCain is still out there, just saying this stuff, just making it up."
Accompanied by Internet giant Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, Obama led a round-table talk on economic policy at a community center near Palm Beach, using the venue to push his jobs and economic recovery plans.
The talk aimed at wooing voters in a region particularly hard-hit by the US real estate and banking crash, with hopes that Obama might be able to win Florida in the November 4 election, a state earlier thought solidly in Republican hands.
As Florida voters flocked to early voting sites for a second day Tuesday, polls suggested Obama now has a slight lead over McCain in the state, which was crucial in President George W. Bush's win over Al Gore in the 2000 election.
Nationally, the latest daily tracking poll of registered voters by Gallup showed Obama expanding his lead to 11 points. The daily Rasmussen survey, however, had McCain narrowing the race to four points, trailing Obama by 46 to 50 percent of voters nationwide.
With Obama stepping out of the race on Thursday and Friday to be with his ailing grandmother in Hawaii, McCain will be able to dominate media coverage as he campaigns aggressively in battleground states.
He and will meet up with running mate Sarah Palin, who has been instrumental in rallying the Republican party's conservative base, in Ohio Wednesday following a that afternoon before flying to Florida for a Thursday rally.
(Sydney Morning Herald)
With your propensity for crashing American planes John, thank God you only sat in the cockpit!
No comments:
Post a Comment