Obama, in Rhode Island, stresses trust
CAMPAIGN '08
The Democratic candidate, in his only appearance in the state before Tuesday's primary, counters Clinton's criticisms while talking about trade, the war and his message of hope.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Standing in the same college recreation center where his rival had ridiculed his message just six days before, Sen. Barack Obama said the main difference between himself and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was that he could be trusted and she could not.
"Real change isn't about changing your position to fit the politics of the moment," he declared this afternoon in a gymnasium at the Rhode Island College Recreation Center.
"Real change, for example, is not calling NAFTA a victory and saying how good it was for the American people until you decide to run for president," Obama continued, reprising an argument that he has made about Clinton in the days running up to Tuesday's primary contests in Rhode Island, Vermont, Texas and Ohio.
Particularly in Ohio, where globalization has been blamed for the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs, Obama and Clinton have gone head to head on trade issues, with the Illinois senator charging that Clinton praised the North American Free Trade Agreement when it was passed during her husband's administration and changed her tune in recent years.
"I won't stand here and tell you that I will stop every job from disappearing because of globalization," Obama said today, "but I will tell you that I will be thinking about workers and not just Wall Street when I put together trade agreements."
He also knocked Clinton for taking money from federal lobbyists, voting for "George Bush's war in Iraq" and voting in favor of a bankruptcy bill that he described as hurting ordinary Americans and that he said she later distanced herself from.
"Real change isn't voting for a bankruptcy bill that makes it harder for families to climb out of debt," Obama said. "She said she voted for this bill and then she hoped it wouldn't pass. I've got to say, that's not how things work. If you don't want it to pass, you don't vote for it."
Real change, he said, isn't voting for the war in Iraq and then describing it as "actually a vote for more diplomacy."
"The title of the bill was 'A Resolution to Authorize the Use of the United States Armed Forces Against Iraq,' " Obama said. "That sounds like you were voting for authorizing the use of armed forces against Iraq. I knew what it was. Lincoln Chaffee knew what it was."
Chaffee, a former Republican senator from Rhode Island, has endorsed Obama and was in the audience. The campaign pegged the overflow crowd at 10,000.
