Biden: McCain attacks attempt to distract voters

ROCHESTER, N.H.

Monday, 13 October 2008 21:01:08

By BETH LaMONTAGNE HALL - Associated Press Writer

Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden said Monday that Republican John McCain is falsely attacking Barack Obama to distract voters from the economy while lurching from one bad idea to another.

"Every single false charge, every single baseless accusation is a simple attempt to get you to focus on something other than what's affecting your families and your country," Biden told about 500 people at an American Legion hall.

"I've known John McCain for a long, long time," Biden added. "It's disappointing that his campaign, as a recent analysis has shown, literally 100 percent of the McCain campaign's advertisements are negative."

"I guess when you vote with the president 100 percent of the time, you can only attack 100 percent of the time," he said.

A study of all presidential ads in the largest 186 TV markets by the University of Wisconsin's advertising project found that nearly every McCain ad from Sept. 28-Oct. 4 was negative, compared to 34 percent of Obama's. Congressional Quarterly found that McCain supported President Bush in Senate votes 90 percent of the time during Bush's eight years in office, though the figure rose to 95 percent in the most recent year.

In an interview airing Monday night on ABC's "Nightline," Biden said it was "fair enough" for Republicans to question Obama's relationship with 1960s antiwar radical Bill Ayers but attacked the way they did that.

"They should put it in context," Biden said. He suggested it would be OK if Republicans noted that Obama was only eight years old when Ayers co-founded a violent radical group but said they objected to Obama's serving on a nonprofit organization board with him a quarter century later. "But to run an ad and saying Barack Obama _ I forget the exact word _ consorts with terrorists, and put this guy's picture up? Come on! That's over the top."

Asked about angry shouts about Obama emerging from McCain's audiences since his campaign began attacking Obama's character, Biden replied, "John seems to have figured it out. He looks like he's trying to tamp it down."

Last Friday after members of a Minnesota audience expressed fear of Obama, McCain responded, "I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared as president of the United States."

In repeating for his Rochester audience the Democratic theme that McCain has shifted erratically on the economy, Biden used language that might be seen as a reference to the Arizona senator's age.

"People assume because he had been a great soldier that he had certain hands, that John in a moment of crisis would know what to do," Biden said. "Well, ladies and gentlemen, John's hands have been anything but certain the last year. They've been uncertain, and the McCain administration would be uncertain, clinging to the past, lurching from one bad idea to another."

Now 72, the Arizona senator would be the oldest president ever to begin a first term.

Urging the audience to vote for Obama if they want change, Biden said the country cannot have four more years of what would essentially be more of Bush's policies on health care, the economy, the war and energy.

Later, in Manchester, Biden highlighted the differences between economic proposals announced Monday by the presidential candidates.

"Barack Obama has chosen to make a speech on economic policy. John McCain has chosen to do a speech of new attacks. The contrast couldn't be more clear," he said.

McCain campaign spokesman Ben Porritt responded: "Americans can't afford Obama's proposal for nearly a trillion dollars in new spending which will definitely mean higher taxes and massive amounts of new debt."

Biden also took aim at Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, whose first campaign trip to New Hampshire is set for Wednesday. Palin said during last week's vice presidential debate that she isn't sure humans are responsible for global warming, he noted.

"How do you resolve global warming if you have no idea how the heck it's caused?" Biden asked.