Candidates trade criticism

COLUMBIA, Mo. – John McCain’s campaign ramped up efforts Monday to portray Barack Obama as dangerously untested on foreign affairs, while Obama attacked McCain’s mortgage-rescue plan as a risky scheme that rewards Wall Street.

With the election 15 days away, the Democratic and Republican tickets stumped in states they desperately want or need to win the White House. McCain was in Missouri, a state that George W. Bush won in 2000 and 2004 and where McCain finds himself in a close race against Obama, who toured Florida on Monday.

At rallies in St. Charles and Belton, McCain seized on remarks that Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden had made a day before.

“Mark my words,” Biden said Sunday at the second of two fundraisers in Seattle. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant, 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. … Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

McCain said the next president wouldn’t have time to adjust to being president and that he, not Obama, had the experience to handle a crisis right away.

“We don’t want a president who invites testing from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars,” McCain said. “What is more troubling is that Senator Biden told their campaign donors that when that crisis hits, they would have to stand with them because it wouldn’t be apparent that Senator Obama would have the right response.”

Obama campaign officials accused the McCain camp of taking Biden’s remarks out of context.

“With our nation facing two wars and 21st-century threats abroad, Senator Biden referenced the simple fact that history shows presidents face challenges from day one,” Obama-Biden campaign spokesman David Wade said. “After eight years of a failed foreign policy, we need Barack Obama’s good judgment and steady leadership, not the erratic and ideological Bush-McCain approach that has set back our security and standing in the world.”

Obama, for his part, told a rally in Florida that now isn’t the time to experiment with a McCain home-mortgage bailout plan that calls for using money from the recently passed $700 billion bailout package and $300 billion from a Federal Housing Authority fund that Congress passed in July to direct the Treasury secretary to buy troubled mortgage loans in order to help families stave off foreclosure.

Under the plan, homeowners would be allowed to stay in their homes and get more affordable government-backed loans.

“His plan would amount to a $300 billion bailout for Wall Street banks,” Obama said. “And guess what? It would all be paid for by you, the American taxpayer. That might sound like a good idea to the former bank lobbyists running my opponent’s campaign. But that’s not the change America needs.”

The financial crisis is hitting Florida hard, with foreclosures high and retiree savings eroding. Where Florida once seemed to favor McCain, polls now show Obama slightly ahead.