Obama: McCain campaign is cynical, not racist

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said Saturday that the campaign of his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, is not racist but is cynical in trying to divert voter attention from the real issues of the presidential campaign.

Mr. Obama met with reporters for the first time since the McCain campaign claimed that the Illinois Democrat had “played the race card” by warning that Mr. McCain would try to scare voters about how Mr. Obama looks unlike “all those other presidents on the dollar bills” — all of whom are white men.

In the ensuing debate, a McCain spokesman suggested that the Arizona Republican was being painted as a racist. That’s an attempt to shift the campaign’s focus, Mr. Obama argued Saturday.

“In no way do I think that John McCain’s campaign was being racist,” Mr. Obama said. “I think they’re cynical, and I think they want to distract people from talking about the real issues.”

He added of the Republicans’ approach: “They’re very good at negative campaigning. They’re not so good at governing.”

Reporters questioned Mr. Obama about the issue of race as he campaigned for a second day in Florida, where offshore oil drilling was emerging as a top issue. The Illinois senator said he was willing to compromise his stand against further drilling along the U.S. coastline if other proposals were part of a plan for energy independence.

“What I’m interested in, ultimately, is going to be governing,” he said. “What that means is we’re going to have to try to get things done.”

A McCain campaign spokesman, Tucker Bounds, said in a statement Saturday: “We’re glad the Obama campaign retracted Barack Obama’s accusation because it was absolutely false, and we’re moving on. The only ‘cynical’ candidate in this election is Barack Obama for his continued opposition to John McCain’s comprehensive energy plan that includes additional oil drilling, gas tax relief and affordable nuclear energy.”

The presidential contest warmed over the past week with charges between the two sides escalating. Mr. McCain contended that Mr. Obama had injected race into the debate with his warning and his reference to presidents on U.S. currency.

At his news conference Saturday, Mr. Obama pointed the finger back at Mr. McCain.

“None of you thought I was making a racially incendiary remark, or playing the race card,” he said. “It wasn’t until John McCain’s team started pushing it that it ended up being on the front page of the New York Times two days in a row.”

Since returning from an overseas trip, Mr. Obama has sought to shift the focus of the campaign back onto bedrock economic issues, and he conceded that Mr. McCain had made that difficult. He said Mr. McCain is seeking to cast him as a risky choice because he doesn’t fit the mold of a traditional presidential candidate.

“I don’t come out of Central Casting when it comes to presidential races for a whole range of reasons,” he said. “I’m young; I’m new to the national scene; my name is Barack Obama; I’m African-American; I was born in Hawaii; I spent time in Indonesia; I don’t have the typical biography of a presidential candidate.”

Mr. Obama argued that voters are still taking their measure of a new kind of presidential candidate, and he said Mr. McCain is cynically trying to feed any doubts that voters may have — and with some success. He cited a McCain TV commercial comparing his “celebrity” to that of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

“You’ve got statistics that say we’ve lost another 50,000 jobs, that Florida is in a recession for the first time in a decade and a half, and what was being talked about was Paris and Britney,” Mr. Obama said.

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