CEDARBURG, WIS. — The two-month push to election day opened Friday with the presidential candidates scouring for votes in key electoral states and heatedly debating whether personal character or economic concerns would determine the next president.
John McCain and Sarah Palin, the Republican team, argued that they represented the surest route to reform. Campaigning in Wisconsin and later in Michigan on the first day of their post-convention swing, McCain praised Palin as an enemy of government as usual.
On a downtown street here lined in red, white and blue bunting, McCain said: "Isn't this the most marvelous running mate in the history of this nation? Sarah Palin: She's magnificent!
"I can't wait to introduce her to Washington, D.C., and the pork-barrelers and the lobbyists and all the special interests whose day is done, my friends," McCain added, to the cheers of thousands.
Democrat Barack Obama blasted the Republican candidates for what he said was their neglect of the economy, which has consistently been cited by voters as their top concern this year. His running mate, Joe Biden, campaigning in southeast Pennsylvania while Obama hewed a bit to the north in Duryea, echoed the theme.
"You would think that George Bush and his potential Republican successor, John McCain, would be spending a lot of time worrying about the economy and all these jobs that are being lost on their watch," said Obama, wrapping Friday's release of a grim jobs report into his criticism.
"But if you watched the Republican National Convention over the past three days, you wouldn't know that we have the highest unemployment rate in five years, because they didn't say a thing about what is going on with the middle class."
The day marked the formal opening of the general-election campaign, a 60-day spurt that will be spent largely in the Midwestern and industrial Eastern venues where the candidates fanned out Friday. With both national conventions now over and the lineups set, the contours of the fall campaign were evident.
Essentially, the candidates are arguing flip sides of the same coin: McCain that his and Palin's backgrounds give them greater understanding of Americans' economic stresses; Obama that the economic stresses are second nature to him because he was raised by a single mother with rocky finances. Biden, like Obama, weighs in with his scrappy Scranton, Pa., beginnings.
