McCain challenges Obama to visit Iraq

Speaking with evident condescension, Arizona Sen. John McCain today offered to travel to Iraq with Barack Obama to help the Illinois senator gain a better understanding of the war and the consequences of withdrawing troops.

The attack by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was in line with his campaign’s attempts to portray Obama as too young and inexperienced to lead the nation. At a rally last week in Stockton, McCain joked that Obama had done very well for a “young man with very little experience.”

Speaking today before a boisterous crowd of 500 who gathered for a town-hall-style meeting here, McCain accused his Democratic rival of ignoring the successes of the troop buildup in Iraq and suggested Obama was ignorant of the facts.

“To say that we failed in Iraq and we’re not succeeding does not comport with the facts on the ground, so we’ve got to show him the facts on the ground,” McCain said.

McCain also said Obama’s proposal to set a date for troop withdrawal would “lead to chaos, genocide and increased Iranian influence.”

In response, Obama spokesman Bill Burton said it was “odd that Sen. McCain, who bought the flawed rationale for war so readily, would be lecturing others on their depth of understanding about Iraq.”

Burton said Obama challenged President Bush’s rationale for the war “from the start.”

“Sen. McCain stubbornly insists on pursuing the failed Bush policy that continues to cost so much, while Sen. Obama believes it’s time to begin a deliberate, careful strategy to remove our troops and compel the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future.”

Obama, making a campaign appearance in Colorado, didn’t refer to McCain nor to his opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Instead, he focused on education policy at a school in Thornton, Colo., north of Denver, on the last day of his three-day swing through key Western battleground states.

Obama reserved special attention for the federal No Child Left Behind law that, critics say, has placed unfunded federal burdens on public schools.

“Forcing our teachers, our principals, and our schools to accomplish all of this without the resources they need is wrong,” Obama said. “Labeling a school and its students as failures one day and then throwing your hands up and walking away from them the next – that’s wrong.”

He also said a system that relies on accountability tests as the standard of achievement missed the broader point of an education.

“The tests our children take should support learning, not just accounting,” he said. “If we really want our children to become the great inventors and problem-solvers of tomorrow, our schools shouldn’t stifle innovation; they should let it thrive.”

Obama was introduced by Roy Romer, ex-superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District and a former Colorado governor. Romer, a Democratic superdelegate, has endorsed Obama.

Flanked by the 44 members of Mapleton Expeditionary School for the Arts senior class – all of whom have been accepted to college – Obama emphasized the need for educational flexibility that allows schools to find new ways to engage students.

He said the American education system was not keeping up with global competitors. “Countries who out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow,” Obama said, adding that China already graduates more engineers than the U.S. and that American high school graduates lag in math and science test scores. “We now have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation in the world. It is worth crying about.”

In response to questions, Obama backed charter schools as a place for innovation but said their creation was a local government matter. He also reiterated his support for bilingual education for all American students while ensuring immigrants become English-proficient.

“The most important thing is not to get bogged down in ideology, but figure out what works,” Obama said. “We as a society do a really bad job teaching foreign languages.”

Obama also called on parents to do more to ensure that their children succeed academically.

“I have no doubt that we will still be talking about these problems in the next century if we do not have parents who are willing to turn off the TV once in a while, and put away the video games, and read to their child,” he said.

Clinton, appearing in Kyle, S.D., made the case that she remained a serious contender for the presidency.

“I view my run for president as a solemn obligation,” Clinton said, appearing before about 300 people outside of a school.

“I don’t run for president because I need any more publicity or because I need the adulation or the celebrity or to live in the White House again,” she added. “I run because I believe we can do so much better in our country.”

Clinton, after reviewing some of her policy positions, turned again to her contest with Obama for the Democratic nomination, and described the race as still very tight. “It is so close that neither of us have the number of delegates needed to be president,” she said.

Clinton referred to the dispute over how to account for Democratic delegates from Michigan and Florida, two states whose primary results are considered unofficial because the contests were held earlier on the calendar than party rules allowed. Party officials will meet Saturday in Washington to try to come up with a compromise to resolve how to allocate the delegates from the two states and wrap up Democratic race.

Making her familiar appeal to party insiders known as superdelegates, Clinton said her primary wins in many of the nation’s biggest states showed that she would be the more formidable Democratic candidate in November. The superdelegates, along with the pledged delegates selected through primaries and caucuses, will choose the party’s presidential candidate at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August.

 maeve.reston@latimes.com

 scott.martelle@latimes.com

 louise.roug@latimes.com

Reston reported from Nevada, Martelle from Colorado and Roug from South Dakota.