In recent days, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has compared George W. Bush and Republican John McCain to the Lone Ranger and Tonto, or to Batman and Robin.
But today, Obama said that comparing McCain to Bush wasn't really fair to Bush. In a rain-drenched speech in Chester, Pa., Obama said that McCain would be worse for the economy than Bush.
John McCain has ridden shotgun as George Bush has driven our economy toward a cliff, and now he wants to take the wheel and step on the gas. When it comes to the issue of taxes, saying that John McCain is running for a third Bush term isn’t being fair to George Bush.
Obama said McCain is proposing $300 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, and $700,000 in tax cuts for the average Fortune 500 CEO, while providing no tax relief for 100 million middle-class families. “That’s not something even George Bush proposed,” he said. He added:
The fact is, there's only one candidate with a plan that could eventually raise taxes on millions of middle-class families, and it isn't me. It's my opponent, who'd make you pay taxes on your healthcare benefits for the first time ever.
The weather that halted Game 5 of the World Series Monday night continued to bear down on the region, so supporters were buffeted with pouring rain, whipping winds and near-freezing conditions. But Obama told the cheering crowd that "this is an unbelievable crowd for this kind of weather, thank you so much. I just want all of you to know, if we see this kind of dedication on election day, there is no way were not going to bring change to America.”
-- Seema Mehta (in Chester, Pa.) and Johanna Neuman (in Washington)
Election day is still one week away, but already the Bush Justice Department is looking into allegations of voter fraud. In Ohio. That's the same state where supporters of Democratic Sen. John Kerry charged foul in the 2004 election.
Responding to a request from Ohio Republican John Boehner, who happens to be the House minority leader, President Bush on Friday asked Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey to investigate the status of 200,000 Ohio voters. If those voters remain on the rolls without added checks, Boehner said, "there is a significant risk, if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted."
But critics argue that an inquiry by a Justice Department that is already tainted by allegations that it fired eight U.S. attorneys for not being Republican enough in their prosecutions looks fishy. As voters in Ohio go to the polls to cast early ballots, as seen in the photo above, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and five other lawmakers, in a letter, urged Mukasey not to intervene in Ohio.
The eyes of the nation are once again on Ohio in this critical election. We have confidence in the work that is being done by Ohio’s bipartisan group of election officials. ... We respectfully request that you refrain from taking any action absent more compelling evidence than partisan political requests. ... We are concerned that complaints ... are designed to reduce the number of legitimate votes that are cast and counted in our state.
A similar legal drama could play out in Colorado. Republicans there are charging that the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is loading up the voter rolls with unqualified people. Democrats are asking a federal court to reinstate approximately 30,000 Colorado voters purged from registration lists by Secretary of State Mike Coffman, a Republican.
Remember all that chatter eight years ago when the letter "W" went missing from computer keyboards, and the other reports of transition shenanigans, when the Clintonistas turned over the White House to the Bushies?
By one government account, they did $15,000 in damage and left some quarters resembling a fraternity house as the sun came up.
With eight days to go until election day, President Bush's White House has reached out to representatives of John McCain and Barack Obama to begin working on the transition to a new administration.
If anyone is being assigned keyboard duty, they're keeping it quiet.
"We have a very aggressive and thought-out transition plan that we are already working through," White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said today.
She added:
We have been in contact with both of the major party candidates, identified people who would get security clearances, so that on Nov. 5, they can hit the ground running and make sure that they get all the information that they need.
He's not running for election anymore, no longer what he dubbed the pundit in chief. Even his prowess as a Republican fund-raiser had ebbed. Acording to the Washington Post's Dan Eggen, it took President Bush two years to raise $150 million for Republican candidates during this election cycle. Heck, Democrat Barack Obama raised that in one month.
But George W. Bush is still a presence on the presidential campaign trail.
Republican John McCain said the country needs "a new direction" on the economy and that he wants to hold down spending, while his opponent wants to raise taxes. But there was one thing, McCain said, that he and his rival agree on: "We both disagree with President Bush on economic policy."
As for Barack Obama, he credited McCain with parting company from Bush on some policies, such as the use of torture on suspected terrorists. But on the economy, he added, McCain stood with the president "every step of the way." What's more, said Obama in what his campaign dubbed the "closing argument":
After 21 months and three debates, Sen. McCain still has not been able to tell the American people a single major thing he'd do differently from George Bush when it comes to the economy. Sen. McCain says that we can't spend the next four years waiting for our luck to change, but you understand that the biggest gamble we can take is embracing the same old Bush-McCain policies that have failed us for the last eight years.
Now they are comic book, radio, television and movie super heroes, all rolled into one.
The Democratic presidential nominee, who began Saturday saying that McCain trying to distance himsef from the president was akin to "Tonto getting mad at the Lone Ranger," ended it by saying "it's like Robin getting mad at Batman."
"John McCain hasn't been a maverick -- he's been a sidekick when it comes to George Bush's economic policies," Obama said.
-- James Gerstenzang
Photo: Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin, in the mid-1960s television series "Batman." Credit: Museum of Radio & Television
Democrat Barack Obama sharpened his criticism of rival John McCain today, comparing him to George W. Bush nearly two dozen times during a half-hour rally at Peccole Stadium at the University of Nevada's Reno campus.
Noting that McCain is trying to distance himself from the president, Obama said: “Well, let’s be clear: John McCain attacking George Bush for his out-of-hand economic policy is like Dick Cheney attacking George Bush for his go-it-alone foreign policy. … It’s like Tonto getting mad at the Lone Ranger.”
-- Seema Mehta (in Reno, Nev.) and Johanna Neuman (in Washington, D.C.)
Photo: Reuters. Actor Clayton Moore as "The Lone Ranger" in the popular 1950s television series shown in a publicity photo with his co-star, Jay Silverheels, who portrayed "Tonto."
It's been nearly five months since President Bush and John McCain were seen at the same place at the same time. And Sarah Palin has yet to get into the same frame as Bush and McCain.
Thanks to Saturday Night Live, here they are, all three, all in the Oval Office.
Watch Bush bumble. Watch Palin fawn.
And watch McCain squirm.
And why shouldn't he squirm?
He's spent nearly five months trying to avoid being seen anywhere near Bush -- physically or politically. Does he really need Bush grinning and telling voters that when they think of McCain, "think of me, George W. Bush. Think of this face"?
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino sent out this e-mail a few minutes ago:
Today the President and Mrs. Bush cast their ballots for the 2008 election during the early voting process. The ballots will be mailed back to Texas today.
So, there will be no trips to the fire station polling place in Crawford, where the president voted in 2006.
Perino said the Bushes planned to spend election night at the White House.
Oh, by the way, for whom did they vote?
Do we really have to answer that? Apparently, we do.
Consider: The president has barely seen John McCain this year. He didn't make it to the Republican National Convention. He's spending the final days of the election campaign at the White House, and not at get-out-the-vote rallies for the John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket.
Gimme a break.
For those who want everything nailed down--or perhaps for those just harking back to the endorsements of Barack Obama by former Bush administration biggies Colin L. Powell and Scott McClellan--Perino dispatched a subsequent message 19 minutes later.
Under the subject line "I find this hard to believe..." she wrote:
But so many reporters have asked just who the president voted for, I guess I have to make it clear--for months the president has said he supports John McCain for president and of course he voted for him.
And now comes his grinning declaration, taped for a new weekend CNN show, "D.L. Hughley Breaks the News," that he has a favorite in the presidential election, and it is not John McCain.
His face lighting up as bright as his French blue shirt, it is clear what he's going to say before he opens his mouth.
So the week that began when one former top Bush administration figure, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, endorsed Obama ends with the endorsement of another.
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino indicated as recently as Wednesday that the president indended to vote for McCain.
— James Gerstenzang
Photo: Scott McClellan and President Bush, in 2006. Credit: Ron Edmonds / Associated Press
Sen. John McCain hit him for leaving future generations with a mountain of debt, failing to meet the cost of bigger Medicare expenses, and abusing the power of his office. He said of the Bush years and his own Republican Party: "We just let things get completely out of hand."
But White House Press Secretary Dana Perino brushed it aside today.
McCain dissed the president in an interview with the Washington Times -- not a bunch to lightly dis the prez themselves, at least not the way they go after the Democrats. He went after him again today, while campaigning in Florida, for not moving quickly enough to help homeowners in the housing and credit crisis.
But none of it could bring Perino to suggest the president was unhappy with the Republican presidential nominee.
Here's how she dismissed the matter at the daily White House news briefing:
This is all I'll say on it, is that the president stands by his policies. The president believes that a Republican Congress has got a lot more done than the current Democrat-led Congress. He supports John McCain and he still believes that he can and should win, and he'll continue to support him until election day.
Question: Follow on that, McCain said that the president had let things get completely out of hand. That's a pretty damning statement of a president who McCain supported and supports him.
Perino: I'm not going to comment on the words that our candidate chooses to use. All I'll say is that the president stands by his policies. He also stands by John McCain.
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
