Obama criticizes McCain for lobbyist-run campaign
The Democratic presidential hopeful pledges to make ethics the centerpiece of his administration. Clinton camp warns rivals against declaring victory.
Billings, Mont. -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama assailed Republican John McCain for a campaign "being run by Washington lobbyists and paid for with their money."
Referring to a string of resignations from McCain's presidential campaign by staffers with ties to lobbying organizations, Obama said that "after nearly three decades in Washington, John McCain can't see or won't acknowledge what's obvious to all of us here today: that lobbyists aren't just part of the system in Washington, they're part of the problem."
Obama, noting that two corporate lobbyists are "still at the helm" of McCain's campaign, said the Arizona senator has been running for president for a year "but it was only in the past few days, when stories surfaced publicly about his lobbyist aides and their clients, that Sen. McCain took any action to curb their roles."
Pledging to make ethics a centerpiece of his administration, Obama said, "I'm not in this race to continue the special interest-driven politics of the last eight years. I'm in this race to end it."
Obama also traded fresh charges today with McCain over whether to reach out diplomatically to dictatorships like Iran.
Promising to "restore the tradition of tough, disciplined negotiation" with U.S. enemies, Obama said that President Bush and McCain are guilty of "naive wishful thinking" in suggesting that the United States can't win "some propaganda fight with dictators."
McCain, in a speech before the National Restaurant Assn. in Chicago, countered that a summit meeting with sworn enemies "is the most prestigious card we have to play in international diplomacy." Obama's proposal to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he said, "betrays the depth of Sen. Obama's inexperience and reckless judgment."
On Tuesday, after primary contests in Kentucky and Oregon, Obama plans to end his schedule in Iowa, the first state that gave him a victory back in January, to announce that he has won a majority of delegates who voted in primaries or caucuses.
But the Hillary Rodham Clinton camp warned against a premature declaration of victory by Obama. "Declaring 'mission accomplished' does not make it so," Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said today on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "There is no standard under which Sen. Obama will secure the requisite number of delegates to obtain the nomination Tuesday night. And the fact that he is out taking victory laps prematurely I think sends a terrible signal to the voters in the upcoming states and to all of those who are invested in this process."
