McCain cites Biden to slam Obama

COLUMBIA, Mo. — John McCain's campaign ramped up efforts Monday to portray Barack Obama as dangerously untested on foreign affairs, while Obama mocked the Republican ticket by saying the election's theme should be "jobs, baby, jobs" for people hurting in a nearly unprecedented economic crisis.

With the election 15 days away, the candidates stumped in states they desperately want or need to win. McCain was in Missouri, a state President Bush won in 2000 and 2004 and where he finds himself in a close race against the Democratic nominee, who toured Florida on Monday with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"Now is the time to close the deal for Barack Obama and close the book on eight years of failed Republican leadership. ... America will rise from the ashes of the Bushes," Clinton said in Orlando.

Clinton has stumped for Obama nationwide, but this was their first joint appearance since July 10.

Obama took a tough stance toward McCain in Orlando, and earlier in Tampa, where he appeared at a baseball stadium with a half-dozen members of the World Series-bound Tampa Bay Rays.

Obama insisted his only goal on taxes, regardless of what McCain says, is to roll back Bush's tax cuts on the wealthy to the levels that applied when Bill Clinton was president.

"John McCain calls that socialism. What he forgets, conveniently, is that just a few years ago, he himself said those Bush tax cuts were irresponsible" because they discriminated against the middle class. "Well, he was right then. And I am right now."

More than 1,000 miles away, in Belton, Mo., McCain freshened his criticism of Obama as too untested to be president by seizing on remarks from Obama's running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., that an international crisis was coming.

McCain asserted Biden had told campaign donors Sunday that in a crisis, supporters of Obama and Biden "would have to stand with them because it wouldn't be apparent that Sen. Obama would have the right response."

Biden, according to remarks recorded and transcribed by ABC News from two fundraisers in Washington state, said: "Mark my words: It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Watch, we're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

McCain went to Missouri as polls show Obama with a modest edge in the state, which supported Republicans in the last two presidential elections.

Compiled from McClatchy Newspapers, Dallas Morning News, The New York Times and The Associated Press

The information in this article, originally published Oct. 21, 2008, was corrected Oct. 22, 2008. A previous version of this story incorrectly reported that Sen. Joe Biden's remarks were made in San Francisco. The vice presidential candidate made the remarks at two Washington fundraisers on Oct. 19, 2008.