Obama accuses McCain of ‘fear peddling’

In a preview of the sharp foreign-policy jabs expected in the general election, Sen. Barack Obama charged that Republican Sen. John McCain is “fear peddling” when criticizing his desire to talk directly with U.S. adversaries.

Mr. Obama, using his dust-up with the White House to rally Democrats, linked Mr. McCain to the unpopular President Bush, accusing them of “bluster,” and told South Dakota voters, “They are trying to scare you.”

The prohibitive frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination said the Republican campaign line that he would negotiate with terrorist groups is false.

“I have been adamant about not negotiating with Hamas, a terrorist organization that has vowed to destroy Israel and won’t recognize them,” Mr. Obama said, adding: “They are not telling the truth.”

The campaign of Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, responded that Mr. Obama had gone off on a “hysterical diatribe,” especially since Mr. Bush had not specifically referred to Mr. Obama by name in his Thursday speech to the Israeli Knesset in which he derided the concept of negotiating with “terrorists.”

Mr. McCain told National Rifle Association members in a speech yesterday he welcomes a debate about “protecting America,” but admonished his probable rival: “He should know better.”

“Senator Obama claimed all I had to offer was the ’naive and irresponsible belief’ that tough talk would cause Iran to give up its nuclear program,” the Arizona Republican said. “I have some news for Senator Obama: Talking, not even with soaring rhetoric, in unconditional meetings with the man who calls Israel a ’stinking corpse’ and arms terrorist who kill Americans will not convince Iran to give up its nuclear program. It is reckless to suggest that unconditional meetings will advance our interests.”

He continued, “It would be a wonderful thing if we lived in a world where we don’t have enemies. But that is not the world we live in, and until Senator Obama understands that reality, the American people have every reason to doubt whether he has the strength, judgment, and determination to keep us safe.”

The president had told the parliament “some seem” the U.S. should negotiate with “terrorists and radicals,” and called such a position “appeasement” while linking it to wanting to talk with Adolf Hitler.

White House adviser Ed Gillespie told reporters yesterday he was “surprised and curious” at the visceral reaction to the president’s Thursday comments from Mr. Obama, his Democratic primary rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and many Democratic congressional leaders.

He said speechwriters anticipated the president’s words might be interpreted as a “rebuke” to former President Jimmy Carter, who met this year with Hamas, but repeated the White Houses claim it was not intended to be a swipe at the Democratic hopeful.

Mr. Obama called the president’s speech a direct attack, and has pushed the issue that he believes is helping his case, citing former presidents who have been willing to talk to adversaries.

The Illinois senator said in Watertown, S.D., yesterday he is “happy” to debate the two Republicans about foreign policy, saying they would have to explain six costly years of war in Iraq, weapons of mass destruction that were never found and why Osama bin Laden is still at large because “we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan.”

“Those are the failed policies that John McCain wants to double down on because he still hasn’t spelled out one substantial way in which he’d be different from George Bush when it comes to foreign policy,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Obama twisted the president’s words, telling voters, “He accused me and other democrats of wanting to negotiate with terrorists and said we were appeasers no different from people who appeased Adolf Hitler. That’s what George Bush said in front of the Israeli parliament.”

While Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton have waged a brutal campaign — sometimes over the issue of talking to adversaries — national Democrats have attempted to present Mr. McCain as offering nothing more than a third Bush term. They have produced ads tying the Republican to the unpopular president and Mr. Obama picked up that torch and ran with it yesterday, putting their names together multiple times in his speech.

“Both Bush and McCain represent the failed foreign policy and fear mongering of the past. I believe the American people are ready to reject this approach and to choose the future,” Mr. Obama said.

When Mrs. Clinton said Mr. Obama’s willingness to meet leaders from Iran and Syria without preconditions was naive and irresponsible last summer, Mr. Obama responded that she was offering a “Bush-Cheney lite” foreign policy.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. also fanned the flames, pushing his defense of Mr. Obama in a statement again yesterday after taking the lead on the issue Thursday.

He brushed back on Mr. Gillespie’s assertion, saying the White House “long ago perfected the art of the political misrepresentation and innuendo masquerading as policy and stringing together sentences that seem unobjectionable when read in isolation, but send a very different message when read together.”

Mr. Biden of Delaware also said Mr. Bush is the only commander in chief of the seven he’s served with who would make a political speech of this nature while overseas.