"The same guys that brought you George Bush are now trying to bring you John McCain. They've basically got the same strategy, which is they can't win an argument on ideas, so what they're going to do is they're going to try to attack me," Obama said.
"This may not be directly affiliated with the campaign, but, you know, suddenly, magically, you got the same guy who wrote 'Unfit for Command' " -- a negative book about Kerry that came out during his 2004 race against Bush -- "he comes out with a new book saying that I'm a nut."
The day's back-and-forth illustrated the sharply different focuses of the two candidates as they head into their nominating conventions, which begin next week when the Democrats gather in Denver.
While Obama has pounded his argument that working- and middle-class Americans have suffered under Bush's economic policies, McCain has seized on the clash between Russia and Georgia to underscore the foreign policy experience gap between himself and his rival.
The Arizona senator repeatedly touted his foreign policy judgment before the veterans group in Orlando -- claiming that he had been prescient in his support of the U.S. troop surge in Iraq and in his assessment of Russia's ambitions toward the democratic nations once part of the Soviet empire.
Seeking to link the Russia-Georgia crisis to domestic concerns over gas prices, he added that a disruption in oil supplies from that region could aggravate economic hardships at home.
"In the term of the next president, skillful handling of such a crisis could be the difference between temporary hardship and far-reaching disaster," McCain said.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton described McCain's remarks as "bluster, distortions and negative attacks."
Obama focused on the economy Monday during his visit to New Mexico. Recent polls showed him edging McCain in the state, which Bush won by less than 6,000 votes in 2004.
At the Albuquerque event, where he was introduced by Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, Obama said that McCain's economic policies represented a continuation of the Bush administration.
"People's economic fortunes have been reversed," he said. "Unless you are in the top one-tenth of 1% in this country, you are not better off than you were four years ago or eight years ago."
Earlier Monday, Obama held an economic round table with more than three dozen women at the Albuquerque Library, where he emphasized that he was raised by a single mother who at times turned to food stamps to get by.
"It's because of that experience that when I hear that women are being treated unfairly in the workplace, where there's injustice and we're not seeing the basic principle of equal pay for equal work . . . I get mad, and I get frustrated," Obama said.
He pledged to fight for equal pay, seven days of paid sick leave annually, an expansion of the Family and Medical Leave Act, the earned income tax credit and child-care credits.
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maeve.reston@latimes.com
seema.mehta@latimes.com
