ORMOND BEACH, Fla. | Sen. John McCain on Thursday morning mocked Sen. Barack Obama’s defense that running mate Joseph R. Biden Jr. wasn’t serious when he said enemy nations will try to test Mr. Obama with an international crisis.
“Really?” Mr. McCain said, in a mordant tone. “Really?”
Mr. Obama on Wednesday said Mr. Biden was merely offering “rhetorical flourishes” when he told a Seattle fundraiser over the weekend that “it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.”
But Mr. McCain, speaking at a lumber yard, said Mr. Biden actually had spoken a fundamentally truth about the election: “That’s another way of saying he accidentally delivered some straight talk to America.”
“We know Senator Obama won’t have the right response. How do we know? Because we’ve seen the wrong response from him over and over again in this campaign,” Mr. McCain said.
In an interview with The Washington Times on Wednesday Mr. McCain said Mr. Biden’s comments prove the world will be a more dangerous place with Mr. Obama.
“We live in a dangerous world and Senator Obama’s running mate has just assured Americans it’ll be a heck of a lot more dangerous if you elect him president,” he said.
Mr. McCain’s stump speech now consists almost entirely of exploiting gaffes from Mr. Obama and his running mate. The Republican presidential nominee is spending Thursday driving Interstate 4 across Florida on a “Joe the Plumber Tour,” to highlight Mr. Obama’s comment to the now-famous Ohio plumber that he would raise taxes on upper-income families in order to “spread the wealth.”
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