Obama criticizes McCain for lobbyist-run campaign

Billings, Mont. – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama assailed Republican John McCain for a campaign “being run by Washington lobbyists and paid for with their money.”

Referring to a string of resignations from McCain’s presidential campaign by staffers with ties to lobbying organizations, Obama said that “after nearly three decades in Washington, John McCain can’t see or won’t acknowledge what’s obvious to all of us here today: that lobbyists aren’t just part of the system in Washington, they’re part of the problem.”

Obama, noting that two corporate lobbyists are “still at the helm” of McCain’s campaign, said the Arizona senator has been running for president for a year “but it was only in the past few days, when stories surfaced publicly about his lobbyist aides and their clients, that Sen. McCain took any action to curb their roles.”

Pledging to make ethics a centerpiece of his administration, Obama said, “I’m not in this race to continue the special interest-driven politics of the last eight years. I’m in this race to end it.”

Obama also traded fresh charges today with McCain over whether to reach out diplomatically to dictatorships like Iran.

Promising to “restore the tradition of tough, disciplined negotiation” with U.S. enemies, Obama said that President Bush and McCain are guilty of “naive wishful thinking” in suggesting that the United States can’t win “some propaganda fight with dictators.”

McCain, in a speech before the National Restaurant Assn. in Chicago, countered that a summit meeting with sworn enemies “is the most prestigious card we have to play in international diplomacy.” Obama’s proposal to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he said, “betrays the depth of Sen. Obama’s inexperience and reckless judgment.”

On Tuesday, after primary contests in Kentucky and Oregon, Obama plans to end his schedule in Iowa, the first state that gave him a victory back in January, to announce that he has won a majority of delegates who voted in primaries or caucuses.

But the Hillary Rodham Clinton camp warned against a premature declaration of victory by Obama. “Declaring ‘mission accomplished’ does not make it so,” Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said today on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “There is no standard under which Sen. Obama will secure the requisite number of delegates to obtain the nomination Tuesday night. And the fact that he is out taking victory laps prematurely I think sends a terrible signal to the voters in the upcoming states and to all of those who are invested in this process.”

Clinton, in a satellite interview with an Oregon TV station, also weighed in, saying, “You can declare yourself anything, but if you don’t have the votes, it doesn’t matter.” She told voters in Kentucky, “This is nowhere near over.”

In fact, Obama explicitly said Sunday he would not be claiming victory Tuesday night, even if he wins a majority of pledged delegates – that is, those elected in primaries and caucuses. That would be premature, Obama said, “until we have a combination of both pledged delegates and superdelegates to hit the mark.”

Obama credited his Democratic rival Monday with running “a magnificent race, and she’s still running hard, as am I.”

Indeed, Clinton, referring to the massive crowd that attended an Obama rally in Portland on Sunday, told voters in Maysville, Ky., today that her opponent would “rather just talk to giant crowds than have questions asked.” And at a rally in Prestonsburg, Ky., later in the day, Clinton said Kentucky, where she is favored to win, “has shown a real capacity to determine who the president is going to be. Sometimes I haven’t liked the way Kentucky has voted but sometimes I have.”

Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, a superdelegate and one of the first colleagues Clinton consulted with after the former first lady left the White House, today announced his support for Obama. Nearly a week after Clinton won a 41-percentage-point victory over Obama in his state, Byrd said he had waited to announce his decision until the primary was over. “But the stakes this November could not be higher,” he said in a written statement.

Earlier, Obama told critics in an interview aired on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to “lay off my wife.”

The Illinois senator was responding to an online ad run by the Tennessee GOP that, during a four-minute video, replays six times Michelle Obama’s comment that “for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.” Michelle Obama has clarified her remark, saying she meant she is proud of the public’s engagement in this year’s political process. Obama called the ad “just low class.”

Obama said that if he wins the nomination, Republicans “can say whatever they want to say about me, my track record. But, he added, “if they think that they’re going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful, because I find unacceptable the notion that you start attacking my wife or my family.”

In the joint interview, Michelle Obama said, “We’re trusting that the American voters are ready to talk about the issues.” She also denied speculation that she has ruled out a place by Clinton on her husband’s ticket.

“There’s no way that I would say ‘absolutely not’ to one of the most successful and powerful and groundbreaking women on this planet,” Michelle Obama said. Empathizing with her as someone who raised “a phenomenal daughter” while in politics, she said, “I think the world of Hillary Clinton,” and added, “I know how hard, just in the little bit of exposure I’ve had to this, what she’s had to deal with and what she’s accomplished.”

Not waiting for the primary season to end, the Democratic National Committee today launched an opposition research website against McCain. Called McCainpedia, after the online website Wikipedia, the site allows users to watch or download video taken by Democratic trackers of the Arizona senator from the campaign trail. “McCainpedia provides the kind of transparency that John McCain would rather avoid,” DNC Chairman Howard Dean said.

 johanna.neuman@latimes.com

 nicholas.riccardi@latimes.com