British prime minister meets with Clinton, Obama, McCain

All three presidential candidates came off the campaign trail today to meet with visiting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown during his visit to Washington.

In meetings of about 45 minutes each, spaced over three hours, Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain talked to the British leader about Iraq, the economy and global warming at the British ambassador’s residence.

Brown, who meets with President Bush and holds a news conference with the president this afternoon at the White House, also had a private breakfast with former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. A member of the liberal Labor Party, Brown, who succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister last year, had asked for the meetings with the presidential candidates so that he could meet the individual who will, come January, become his American counterpart.

Afterward, he predicted that no matter who wins the U.S. election, ties between the United States and Europe will improve in coming years.

“I feel I can bring Europe and America closer together for the future,” Brown said. “That will be to the advantage of all of us, to deal with economic problems, climate change and help make for a more peaceful world in the future. I see huge opportunities in the next few years for Europe and America to work more closely together.”

Asked about the candidates’ meetings, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said: “We think it’s probably a wise move by the prime minister to get to know one of the individuals who will be elected president.”

Meanwhile today, Clinton’s campaign denied that she had referred disparagingly to blue-collar workers after they voted Republican in the 1994 congressional elections, which gave the GOP control of Congress and cast a shadow on her husband’s presidency.

The allegation, which surfaced yesterday on the Huffington Post, is that at a Camp David retreat in January 1995, then First Lady Hillary Clinton told her husband to abandon southern working-class voters who had deserted his party at the polls.

“Screw ‘em,” she reportedly said, according to several witnesses. “You don’t owe them a thing, Bill. They’ve done nothing for you. You don’t have to do anything for them.”

Today her campaign denied the charge. “It ain’t so, it ain’t so,” communications director Howard Wolfson said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “This is not something that occurred.”

Just days before Tuesday’s pivotal primary in Pennsylvania, where working-class workers could tip the balance, Clinton has spent the last week pounding rival Obama for saying that small-town Americans were “bitter” over their economic woes, and clinging to religion and guns as a result. Clinton dismissively said: “I don’t think [Obama] really gets it that people are looking for a president who stands up for you and not looks down on you.”

As the Illinois and New York senators battled for the Democratic nomination, Arizona Sen. McCain, having already wrapped up the GOP nomination, continued to polish his credentials on the economic front.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television, McCain said federal spending could be cut by $100 billion “in a New York minute” and said despite “tough times,” the key to future growth is to cut taxes and spending. “The fundamentals of the American economy are strong,” he said.

johanna.neuman@latimes.com