TERRE HAUTE, IND. — Barack Obama on Saturday ridiculed John McCain's renewed emphasis on his reputation as a government reformer, mocking the Republican presidential nominee in unusually sharp language while campaigning in this traditional GOP stronghold.
"This is coming from the party that's been in charge for eight years. They've been running the show," Obama told some 800 supporters here at the Wabash Valley fairgrounds.
"I guess maybe what they're saying is, 'Watch out, George Bush. Except for economic policies, and tax policies, and energy policies, and healthcare policies, and education policies, and Karl Rove-style politics, except for all that, we're really going to bring change to Washington. We're going to shake things up.' "
Ever since McCain selected her as his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has cited their reputations for political independence to argue that they would be more effective in changing Washington than Obama and his vice presidential nominee, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.
"Sen. McCain has called the two of us a team of mavericks, and he knows that we've done some shaking up there in Alaska," she said at the Albuquerque convention center before a crowd of about 6,000.
Saturday, both campaigns also talked up their economic plans in the wake of the worst jobless report in five years and news that the Bush administration was laboring to devise a rescue plan for the nation's mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
But it was the dispute over who could bring change that created the most friction.
On the second day of their post-convention tour, McCain and Palin sought to woo voters with their message of change in Albuquerque and, earlier in the day, in conservative Colorado Springs at a rally in a breezy airplane hangar. But it was Palin, much more than McCain, who pressed the argument.
As she had in her speeches Friday, Palin lavished praise on McCain and ridiculed Obama, the senator from Illinois, for his judgment on Iraq and his "high-flown speechmaking."
"There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you, and that man is John McCain," she said.
Palin repeatedly questioned Obama's ability to reform Washington, but she also took aim at Biden, who has served in Congress a decade longer than McCain.
"Sen. Biden can claim many chairmanships across many, many years in Washington and certainly many friends in the Washington establishment," she said, "but even those admirers could not be able to call him an agent of change."
