WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush stirred up the U.S. presidential campaign Thursday by suggesting that Democratic front-runner Barack Obama’s pledge to talk to Iran’s leader amounted to “the false comfort of appeasement.”

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Bush said in a speech to the Israeli parliament marking Israel’s 60th anniversary.

Without mentioning Obama by name, he compared “this foolish delusion” to the appeasement of the Nazis ahead of World War Two. 

“As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement,” Bush said.

The remark drew swift response from Obama, who argues the United States blunders by refusing to talk to the leaders of hostile nations like Iran, Syria and Cuba.

“It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack,” Obama said.

“The president’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel,” he said.

Republican candidate John McCain criticized Obama’s pledge to speak directly to U.S. foes, saying “it shows naivete and inexperience and lack of judgment” to consider sitting down with a country like Iran that wants to destroy Israel. “My question is, what does he want to talk about?” McCain said.

Not everyone in Bush’s administration is opposed to talking to Iran. Defense Secretary Robert Gates offered his own ideas just a day before the president’s Knesset speech, telling a diplomatic forum: “We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage with respect to the Iranians and then sit down and talk with them.”

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Republican presidential candidate John McCain says he would take a page from the British government if elected and hold question-and-answer sessions with lawmakers.

“I will ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions, and address criticism, much the same as the prime minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons,” McCain told an audience Thursday.

Although U.S. presidents deliver annual “State of the Union” speeches to Congress at the start of each year, those formal addresses do not include a question-and-answer session.

McCain says exchanges like the sometimes raucous sessions in the British House of Commons are a way of holding leaders’ feet to the fire.

“When we make errors, I will confess them readily, and explain what we intend to do to correct them,” McCain said. He also reiterated a pledge to hold weekly news conferences, a change from President George W. Bush’s practice of holding them roughly once a month.

Is it a good idea to give lawmakers a chance to pepper the U.S. president with questions on a regular basis?

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Richard Clement (McCain speaks in Oregon)

BEAVERTON, Oregon (Reuters) - The battle for the Democratic nomination has been long and tiring. So much so that Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama seemed to forget how many states were in the United States.

“Over the last fifteen months, we’ve travelled to every corner of the United States,” the Illinois senator said during a campaign event in Beaverton, Oregon.

“I’ve now been in 57 states, I think — one left to go,” Obama said. “Alaska and Hawaii I was not allowed to go to … my staff could not justify it,” he added after hearing laughter from the audience.

Obama apparently did not realize that he had said 57, instead of 47, states visited so far.

“It sure seems like there are 57 states,” a travel-weary campaign aide said after the event. 

Obama has actually been to 46 U.S. states so far during the campaign. He has not visited South Dakota, Arkansas, Alaska or Hawaii, an aide said.

The Illinois senator and his rival, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, have criss-crossed the country as they vie for the Democratic presidential nomination. The winner will face Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain in November’s general election.

Photo credit: Reuters/Steve Dipaola (Obama speaks about economy in Beaverton, Oregon) 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage
 

CHICAGO - As Barack Obama celebrated his compelling win in North Carolina and the unexpected closeness of the Indiana race on Tuesday night, his senior strategist said one of the campaign’s top tasks now is to court influential Democratic Party figures.
 
The Democratic senator from Illinois was seen as showing resilience after a bumpy ride in which he has struggled with questions about his former pastor’s fiery sermons and efforts by Clinton to paint him as an “out of touch” elitist.
 
Analysts said his rival Hillary Clinton, who won only narrowly in Indiana where she had been favored to do well, was likely to face increased pressure to exit the race because her showing did little to advance her argument that she would be more electable than Obama in a matchup against Republican Sen. John McCain.
 
Asked by reporters whether there would be a slew of new endorsements from the party stalwarts and officials known as the “superdelegates,” Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, was careful not to reveal too much.
 
“We’re going to be reaching out to them,” Axelrod told reporters as Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, flew back home to Chicago from his evening rally in North Carolina.
 
The Obama strategist said the message in these conversations would be a simple one: “Read the newspapers.”

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Chris Keane (Obama waves to supporters at his North Carolina and Indiana primary election night rally in Raleigh.)

WASHINGTON - House Minority Leader John Boehner on Wednesday shrugged off a warning that his fellow Republicans are facing peril in the fall elections unless they change course, a prediction made by a former Republican House speaker. 
 
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned on Tuesday that Republicans must immediately “chart a bold course of real change” otherwise they will “suffer decisive losses this November.”
   
That apparently didn’t sit too well with Boehner as he faces an uphill battle to reclaim control of the U.S. House of Representatives since more than two dozen fellow House Republicans are leaving this fall or running for another office. And last weekend, they lost a Republican seat in Louisiana in a special election.
 
“Listen a lot of people have a lot of ideas and advice for me and our leadership team about what it is that we should do,” Boehner told reporters after a meeting with President George W. Bush at the White House.
 
“I tell our colleagues every week, if you stand up and do the right things for the right reasons, the right things will happen,” Boehner said. “And frankly, we have been standing up for the right things that the American people want us to.”
 
The Ohio Republican argued that their efforts to cut taxes and expand exploration for oil and gas in the United States served as evidence that they were on the right path for the November elections. 
 
“There’s a whole array of issues that I think where we’re representing the interests of the American people,” Boehner said.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Boehner after a meeting with Bush at the White House)

WASHINGTON - Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich is warning fellow Republicans in the U.S. Congress that they face a possible Election Day disaster this fall.

“Either congressional Republicans are going to chart a bold course of real change or they are going to suffer decisive losses this November,” Gingrich wrote on Tuesday in HumanEvents.com, a leading conservative voice.

Gingrich, who helped Republicans win control of the House for the first time in 40 years in 1994, is now a commentator who likes to give his party unsolicited advice.

Gingrich says the Republican loss in the special election in Louisiana’s sixth congressional district this past weekend should be “a sharp wake up call” for party members.

Gingrich noted President George W. Bush carried the district by 19 percentage points in winning reelection in 2004. In the end, Democratic State Rep. Donald Cazayoux defeated Republican Woody Jenkins. Republicans tried to cast Cazayoux a liberal by comparing him to Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, but voters didn’t seem to buy it.

The former Georgia lawmaker also pointed to polls that show Americans now favor Democrats on a host of issues, including taxes and the war on terrorism.

Gingrich said House Republicans should instruct their leader, John Boehner, to come up with a plan for “real change” within a few weeks. He made a number of suggestions, including repealing the gas tax this summer and paying for it by cutting federal spending.

In response, Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said his boss agrees that the party “can only succeed this year by being agents of change and reform.”

“In the coming weeks, we will be laying out Republican policies that embody the sort of changes we need,” Steel said.  

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Mark Avery (file photo)     

WINSTON-SALEM -  Republican John McCain had a “where-am-I?” moment Tuesday during a busy day on the campaign trail.

“I appreciate the hospitality of the students and faculty of West Virginia,” McCain told the audience at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
 
The audience laughed and McCain quickly corrected himself before launching in to a speech on judicial appointments.

With hectic campaign schedules that take them from town to town and state to state, the candidates sometimes stumble over where they are.

Campaigning in Wyoming in March, Barack Obama made a similar slip. Shaking hands and signing baseball caps at a diner, the Illinois senator said, “It’s really nice in Wisconsin,” and then added, “And Wyoming.”

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Chris Keane (McCain speaks in North Carolina on Monday)

Barack Obama says his campaign for U.S. president clearly has suffered damage from a series of controversies over the past few weeks, but he is trying to move forward without “obsessing” over the setbacks.

Obama says public comments by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, calling the Sept. 11 attacks retribution for U.S. policy and blaming the U.S. government for the spread of AIDS would no doubt be a factor in some voters minds.

But he said he would leave it to pollsters to analyze the extent of the impact.

“We’ve had a rough couple of weeks. I won’t deny that,” Obama told reporters. “I don’t think that what happened with Rev. Wright was helpful,” said the Illinois senator who forcefully denounced the minister’s rhetoric earlier this week.

The Wright flap is something that voters will “factor into the mix. How it plays itself out I can’t tell,” he said.

Obama has been honing his message on the economy and emphasizing a folksier, more personal campaigning style as he courts voters ahead of Tuesday’s contests in Indiana and North Carolina.

“What I don’t spend a lot of time doing is obsessing about what ifs and should’ve beens. We’ll see what happens on Tuesday and then we’re going to keep on going to the next contests.”

The Illinois senator is vying with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination and the right to run against Republican Sen. John McCain in the November election.

He has been trying especially hard lately to court working class voters who have backed Clinton more heavily in recent contests in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

In addition to the Wright controversy, Obama was hit by criticism from Clinton and McCain last month who seized on his comments about “bitter” small-town” voters to label him an elitist.

“I do think that one of the ironies of the last two or three weeks was this idea that somehow Michelle and I were elitist, pointy-headed intellectual types,” Obama said. “We didn’t recognize the caricature I think that has being painted of us over the last couple of weeks and we want to make sure that that’s pushed aside.” 
     
Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Frank Polich (Obama greets Indiana supporters on Thursday)

CHARLES CITY, Indiana - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried on Thursday to win over members of one of his most skeptical audiences: senior citizens.

Those voters have tended to be a strong base for Obama’s rival Hillary Clinton, a former first lady and New York senator. At 60, Clinton is older than the 46-year-old Obama and is seen by many older voters as the more experienced candidate.

Visiting an assisted living center in Indiana, the Illinois senator shared stories about his grandfather’s service in World War II, his grandmother’s frugality and his mother’s battle with cancer.

He also expressed empathy for the daily struggles of older people worried about paying for prescription drugs and health care while trying to get by on a fixed income.

In a proposal that was popular with the group, Obama promised to try to eliminate the income tax on their Social Security benefits.

He also underlined his opposition to a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax — an idea proposed by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain  and also supported by Clinton.

Obama said the gas tax suspension “isn’t a real solution” because it would provide, at most, only a short-term fix to the energy problem. He also said it would divert money from the fund used to pay for highway repairs.

One questioner mentioned an idea that Clinton has proposed — suspending the gasoline tax and making up the difference for the highway trust fund with a tax on windfall profits of oil companies.

The questioner, an older woman, asked whether a short-term fix to the energy problem was such a bad thing, remarking jokingly that “a lot of us are nothing but short-timers.”

That drew laughter from the group, prompting Obama to say: “You look like you’re going to be around for a while.”

Obama seemed to impress the crowd after a nearly hour-long visit.

Lavera Schroeder, 82, said she found Obama to be a “normal person” who “talked on our terms” and did not use confusing words or jargon that the group would not understand.

“He said his mother tried to get by,” she said. “That’s how we grew up. We ate molasses and home-made bread.”

But Schroeder said she would not be able to vote for Obama in Tuesday’s primary election in Indiana because she had been in the hospital and not had a chance to register.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage

- Photo credit: Reuters/John Gress (Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama campaigns at the CMW specialty metals factory in Indianapolis, Indiana, on April 30)

CHICAGO - Comedian, author and former radio talk show host Al Franken, the likely Democratic Senate candidate for Minnesota, is paying $70,000 in back taxes and penalties to 17 states to make up for what he says were mistakes by his accountant.

State Republicans say Franken, who was expected to pose a strong challenge to incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman in the November election, is at fault. 

“Al Franken’s business activities must have a full, and complete public airing if he is to retain any credibility as a candidate for public office,” Ron Carey, chairman of the Republican Party of Minnesota, said in a statement.

Franken told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that errors by his New York accountant led him to overpay $49,253 taxes to New York state and Minnesota where he lived between 2003 and 2006, while not paying $53,404 in taxes to 17 states where he earned money for appearances and speeches.

The $70,000 is an estimation of what he owes, Franken said.

He and his wife, Franni, “believe in paying state and federal taxes on all our income,” Franken told the newspaper.

Carey said in a statement that Franken signed a disclosure statement showing he was aware of earning money in California and elsewhere.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Eric Miller (Al Franken speaks at rally in March)