TOLEDO, Ohio - Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden commented on Sunday on the attractiveness of Republican John McCain’s new running mate, Sarah Palin. 
 Campaigning with Barack Obama in the industrial state of Ohio, Biden digressed as he was drawing a contrast between his party’s approach on the economy and that of McCain’s party.

“There’s a gigantic — gigantic difference between John McCain and Barack Obama, and between me and, I suspect, my vice presidential opponent,” Biden said.  “Well there’s obvious differences — she’s good looking,” he said of Palin, a 44-year-old Alaska governor and former beauty queen. 

 When a woman in the audience shouted out that she thought Biden was “gorgeous,” he drew laughter from the crowd when he asked her to make sure his wife heard that. 
“I haven’t heard that in a long, long, long time,” said Biden, 65, who has thinning gray hair. 

Referring to the 47-year-old Obama, he added, “Hanging around a lean, young-looking guy is making me feel pretty old, you know, what I mean? I thought I was in pretty good shape until I hung out with this guy.”

Photo: Reuters/Jim Young (Biden and Obama) Reuters/John Gress (Palin and McCain)

ST. PAUL - Barack Obama wants the country to know that he’s a regular, beer-drinking guy. But don’t count on him to throw the first punch in a bar brawl.

During an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday, the Democratic presidential nominee bristled when his interviewer implied that he had recently sipped a beer to gain favor with blue-collar voters. CBS’s Steve Kroft added, “I know you don’t particularly like…”

Obama cut off Kroft, saying, “Steve, I had a beer last night. I mean, where do these stories come from man?”

This wasn’t the first time in his presidential campaign that the Harvard-educated Obama has had to fend off suggestions that he might be too erudite for Joe Six Pack.

It’s an impression he’ll want to shake if he hopes to win enough votes in important blue-collar states like Pennsylvania and Ohio this fall.

In support of that effort, Obama went bowling during one campaign appearance and at the beginning of a foreign tour in July he grabbed a basketball and sunk a now-famous “three-pointer.”

Even so, Kroft was compelled to ask Obama whether he lacked a “killer instinct” and if being confrontational was just not in his DNA — something voters might be weighing with so many bad guys lurking out there in the world.

“The fact that I don’t go out of my way to call people names, or try to take cheap shots, and that I try not to throw the first punch,” Obama said, “sometimes leads people to underestimate what I’ve got.” 

The 47-year-old senator from Illinois then issued a warning: Not only can he take a punch, occasionally he throws one.

Otherwise, “I wouldn’t be sittin’ here” as the first black major party presidential nominee, Obama said.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Jason Reed.  Sen. Barack Obama drinks a beer at the Raleigh Times Bar in Raleigh, North Carolina, May 6, 2008

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LIMA, Ohio - Democratic White House contender Barack Obama said on Sunday he would tap his e-mail list of volunteers and donors to help with the relief effort if Hurricane Gustav wreaks havoc on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

“I think we can get tons of volunteers to travel down there, if it becomes necessary,” Obama told reporters after attending a church service in Lima, Ohio. “We can activate an e-mail list of a couple million people who want to give back.”

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain flew to Mississippi to view the preparations for the storm. 

With the Republican convention scheduled to begin this week in St. Paul, Minnesota, President George W. Bush said he would not attend the that event and will instead address the assembly via satellite so he can oversee the federal response to Hurricane Gustav.

Obama said he was wary of visiting the Gulf Coast region right away because of the disruption his entourage of security officials might cause. 

But he declined to criticize McCain for his visit to Mississippi.

“I think that a big storm like this raises bipartisan concerns and I think for John to want to find out what is going on is fine,” Obama said, adding that he assumed McCain would steer clear of places where his entourage might get in the way.

The Bush administration was widely criticized as having botched the response to Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

Obama, who spoke on Saturday with David Paulison, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the agency seemed to be better positioned this time to grapple with the storm.

“Having said that, even if some of those lessons have been learned, it’s still very unpredictable what the course of the storm is going to be and what its magnitude is,” he added. 
     
  Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young.  Sen. Barack Obama speaks at a campaign rally in Beaver, Pennsylvania,  Aug. 29, 2008    

WASHINGTON, Pa. - So maybe saying nice things about Hillary Clinton at a Republican rally isn’t such a good idea.
 
John McCain’s new vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, acknowledged the New York senator on Saturday when reflecting on her new found role as a national candidate.
 
The reaction from a large chunk of the audience: boos.
 
“I think as well today of two other women who came before me in national elections, and I can’t begin this great effort without honoring the achievements of Geraldine Ferraro back in 1984 and of course, Senator Hillary Clinton,” Palin said.
    
Boo. Boo. Boo.
    
So much for trying to win over disaffected Clinton supporters. They, apparently, are not turning up to McCain-Palin rallies.
    
But no matter. The Alaska governor breezed on with a nod to her own historic bid, in Clinton’s wake.
    
“It was rightly noted in Denver this week that Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America,” she said. “But thankfully, as it turns out, the women of America aren’t finished yet, and the voters will shatter that glass ceiling once and for all.”
    
The McCain campaign has made a concerted effort to win over Clinton backers who were upset at her loss in the Democratic primary to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.
    
Palin’s presence on the ticket puts the mother of five in line to make history as the first female U.S. vice president if she and McCain beat Obama and his running mate, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, in the Nov. 4 election.

Photo credit: Reuters/John Gress (Palin campaigns in Washington)

It's no surprise talk show host Oprah Winfrey was wowed by Sen. Barack Obama's speech in Denver. After all, she endorsed him last year and may have swayed early primary voters in Obama's direction.

But O went beyond just being enthused by Obama's speech on Thursday, as the presidential candidate accepted the Democratic Party nomination. "Just seeing him on stage, I cried my eyelashes off," Winfrey told a reporter with the TV show Entertainment Tonight.

Rapper Kanye West, 31, who was with Winfrey, was also effusive about the speech. "It changed my life," West told ET. In reaction to West, Winfrey went on to say it changed her life, too. "We have to do whatever it takes to get him in office," she said.

The Democratic National Convention in Denver was a virtual who's who of celebrity backers with actors Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, who are married, showing up. There were director Steven Spielberg, actor Forest Whitaker and singer Jennifer Lopez, and that's not even counting the stars -- including Stevie Wonder -- who performed on-stage at the DNC.

Obama's rival in the run for the White House, Republican Senator John McCain, has attacked Obama as little more than a celebrity himself in a campaign advertisement.

But McCain also has his own stable of celebrity backers. Actor Dean Cain, 42, who played Superman on the 1990s television show "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," spoke of his support for McCain to Larry King on cable network CNN following Obama's speech.

McCain also has the support of Latin singer Daddy Yankee and reality star Heidi Montag. Stay tuned -- as they say in television -- to see what kind of star power turns out for the Republican National Convention, which starts on Monday.

MONACA, Pennsylvania - Barack Obama distanced himself on Friday from his campaign’s initially critical statement about his rival John McCain’s choice of first-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate.
 
McCain, a 72-year-old veteran Republican senator from Arizona, picked a political unknown and self-described “hockey mom” who will become the first woman Republican vice presidential candidate.
 
When the surprise decision was announced, Obama was on the tarmac at a Denver airport preparing to depart for a bus tour in the industrial Midwest with his running mate, Joe Biden. The Democratic candidate had just made history by becoming the first black to accept a major-party presidential nomination.
 
His spokesman, Bill Burton, issued a statement suggesting Palin was too inexperienced to be vice president. “Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency,” it  said.
 
The McCain campaign quickly shot back that it was “audacious” for aides to the 47-year-old first-term Illinois senator to accuse Palin of inexperience.
 
Later in the day, Obama told reporters that the campaign’s early statement was “hair-trigger” and did not reflect his sentiments.
 
“I haven’t met her before. She seems like a compelling person. Obviously, a terrific story, personal story,” he said while touring a biodiesel plant in Monaca, Pennsylvania.
 
Obama said the choice of Palin was “one more indicator of this country moving forward” and a hit against the glass ceiling that has limited women’s advancement.
 
In a phone call to Palin, Obama told her he thought she would be a terrific candidate and wished her luck “but not too much luck,” according to Robert Gibbs, his senior adviser.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/John Gress (McCain stands with his vice presidential running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in Dayton, Ohio, Aug. 29, 2008)

WASHINGTON - Republican presidential hopeful John McCain picked social conservative Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate.

Palin, not particularly well-known nationally, was previously a small-town mayor who beat the Alaska incumbent governor Frank Murkowski in the state’s Republican primary in 2006 and went on to win in the general election.

The 44-year-old one-term governor is an opponent of abortion rights, a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association and a fiscal conservative — not to mention an avid sportswoman and a beauty pageant winner.

While some social conservatives have been skeptical about McCain as the Republican nominee, will his choice of Palin help win them over? Will the selection of a woman draw some disaffected supporters of Hillary Clinton who were disappointed she was not on the Democratic ticket? Did McCain successfully prevent a bounce for his opponent Barack Obama, who wrapped up his nominating convention on Thursday evening?

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Matt Sullivan (Palin appears for the first time as the Republican vice presidential running mate with McCain.)

The last balloon has popped, the last piece confetti has fluttered to the ground and the last word has been spoken by Democrats who wrapped up their nominating convention Thursday.

Did presidential hopeful Barack Obama win over doubters, was he able to spell out enough details about his plans if elected, and did his attacks trying to tie rival Republican John McCain to the Bush administration work?

Let us know your thoughts and what you want to see from the Republicans in St. Paul next week.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder (Obama arrives to deliver his acceptance speech)

In the hours before Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at Invesco Field in Denver, Yoel Lefkowitz talks about what he wants to hear the candidate, and what it will take to win the support of Brooklyn’s Hasidic community.

Reuters Inside the Tent has more than 40 delegates and other attendees in Denver and St. Paul, equipped with video cameras to capture the conventions from the ground up. Adam Pasick is the U.S Consumer Media Editor for Reuters.com.

Click here for a full list of contributors at the Democratic National Convention. We’ll be moving to St. Paul for the Republican National Convention next week.

Click here for more Inside the Tent contributions.

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DENVER - The English-language channel of the Arabic news network Al Jazeera is getting a Colorado reception as frosty as a cold Coors Light.

Al Jazeera English is broadcasting from Golden, Colo., home of the Coors Brewing Company , as part of its coverage of the Democratic National Convention, as well as from the Pepsi Center and Invesco Field.

The broadcasts from small-town Colorado are intended to show their international audience a slice of Americana, according to political program editor Julian Ingle. Only one satellite provider and a handful of cable companies carry Al Jazeera English in the United States, but the network is available in 120 million homes in 80 countries.

“We’re doing something that no international network has done before,” Ingle said.

But residents of Golden weren’t quite as happy with their visitors. A handful said welcoming the station, known for airing Osama bin Laden’s video messages, was offensive to U.S. veterans.

“It’s a wrong association, it’s a misconception,” Ingle said, pointing out that many major media outlets broadcast bin Laden’s messages.

A recent Golden city council meeting drew about twenty people who discussed Al Jazeera English’s coverage.

“It was pretty fairly balanced across the board, people in favor of them coming and people who weren’t,” said Golden communications manager Sabrina D’Agosta.

In the end, the council did not ask the station to change its plans. “It is not for government to tell them that they can’t come, for us to deny them of their constitutional rights,” D’Agosta said.

But critics did win another battle: Golden City Manager Mike Bestor withdrew an invitation for the network to broadcast from his backyard barbecue.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

– Reporting by Shannon Bond and Beth Marlowe, recent graduates of the Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, who are interning for Reuters at the Democratic National Convetion.

Photo: A tourist listens to a tour guide speak about beer at the Coors brewery in Golden, Colorado October 16, 2007. REUTERS/Rick Wilking