Bill Clinton makes offer to campaign for Obama
NEW YORK - Former President Bill Clinton said yesterday he is eager to campaign for Barack Obama whenever the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee needs him but has not given any thought to whether he wants to speak at the party convention in Denver.
Relations between Clinton and Obama have only just begun to thaw since Obama defeated the former president's wife in the bruising Democratic primary that ended last month. Throughout that bare-knuckle race, Clinton had portrayed Obama as too inexperienced to be president.
At a news conference yesterday for work that his foundation is doing, Clinton said he had a "good talk" with Obama on the phone and is eager to get out on the road for the Illinois senator. "I told him that whenever he wanted me to do it, I was ready, and so it's basically on their timetable," Clinton said.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
McCain blasts Obama's trip to the Middle East
Trying to undermine Barack Obama's much-ballyhooed visit to Iraq and Afghanistan before he goes, John McCain sought yesterday to press the argument that Obama's policy is determined by politics, not facts.
Some of the Republican's top surrogates unveiled a nearly eight-minute documentary titled, "The Obama Iraq Documentary: Whatever the Politics Demand." And at a campaign event in Kansas City, Mo., McCain went after Obama for opposing the surge of US troops in Iraq and for promising a withdrawal before visiting.
McCain reminded voters that in early 2007, when he called for adding troops and employing a new anti-insurgency strategy, he was one of the few who did so and that pundits were writing his political obituary. The crowd stood and applauded when he repeated what he said then: that he would much rather lose a political campaign than lose a war.
"Barack Obama has determined that he would rather lose a war that we are winning than lose an election by alienating his base," Randy Scheunemann, McCain's senior foreign policy adviser, wrote in a blistering memo that suggested that Obama is standing behind his withdrawal plan because of his antiwar supporters.
Obama's campaign responded by criticizing McCain for an open-ended commitment to keep US forces in Iraq and accusing him of until this week ignoring Afghanistan, where Obama argues that the United States needs to send more troops to take on the Taliban and al Qaeda.
"All John McCain has ever looked for in Iraq are reasons to stay there indefinitely. He has stubbornly championed a strategy of fighting an unnecessary war in Iraq regardless of the shifting facts offered to justify it, regardless of the levels of violence and political progress in the country, and regardless of the gathering strength of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan," Hari Sevugan, an Obama spokesman, said in a statement.
FOON RHEE
N.Y. governor, NAACP rail against New Yorker cover
CINCINNATI - Governor David Paterson of New York and the NAACP yesterday condemned the New Yorker magazine's satirical cover depicting Barack Obama and his wife as flag-burning radicals.
Paterson, a Democrat who is the state's first black governor, told delegates at the civil rights organization's national convention that the cover that hit newsstands Monday is "one of the most malignant, vicious covers of a magazine I have ever seen," drawing loud applause.
"It depicted them as angry, hateful, violent, and unpatriotic," Paterson said.
The NAACP released a resolution that calls the cover "tasteless, Islam-a-phobic, mean spirited, and racially offensive."
The New Yorker had no immediate comment but has said it uses satire "to hold up a mirror to prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd. And that's the spirit of this cover."
The cover depicts Obama in traditional Muslim clothing while his wife, Michelle, has an assault rifle slung over one shoulder and is dressed in camouflage and combat boots with her hair in an Afro.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Obama defends his wife against press criticism
What gets under Barack Obama's skin?
Criticism of his wife, Michelle.
In an interview with Glamour magazine, Obama said attacks on his wife are infuriating and blamed the conservative press for going after his wife as if she were the candidate.
"If they have a difference with me on policy, they should debate me. Not her," Obama told the magazine.
Michelle Obama has been highly active in her husband's campaign but came under fire in February when she said she was proud of her country for the first time in her adult life. She later clarified her remark, saying she has always been proud of her country and was particularly proud to see so many people involved in the political process.
ASSOCIATED PRESS AND GLOBE STAFF 