Mc Cain Out of Ideas: Obama

McCain out of ideas: Obama
Barbara Ferguson | Arab News


WASHINGTON: Democrat Barack Obama brushed aside White House rival John McCain’s new attacks on his national security and tax policy, dismissing his Republican foe as “out of ideas”.

But 12 days before the election, McCain warned Obama not to take victory for granted, despite his mammoth financial advantage and opinion polls giving him a widening lead.



“Whoever is the next president is going to have to deal with a whole host of challenges internationally, and that a period of transition in a new administration is always one in which we have to be vigilant,” Obama said.

The Democratic nominee gathered a tight group of top national security advisers to discuss emerging global threats, in a pre-planned meeting, a day after McCain suggested Obama was not fit to face a breaking foreign policy crisis.

The rivals traded their latest shots after a new NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found the Democrat had a solid 10-point lead. A Fox News survey put Obama up nine points 49 points to 40 nationwide.

A Zogby polling of 10 Presidential battleground states showed McCain capturing a significant lead — for the time being — in the state of Indiana, causing the Hoosier State to move from purple to Republican red.

The move increases McCain to 174 electoral college votes, according to Zogby’s Electoral College Map (available at www.zogby.com). Obama currently has 273 electoral votes, three more than needed for election.

World citizens, polled in Gallup Polls in 70 countries, found more are divided over whether the outcome of the US election makes a difference to their country, with 31 percent saying it does and 21 percent saying it does not. Moreover, 49 percent of those surveyed did not have an opinion.

Gallup Polls conducted in May-August 2008 in six predominantly Muslim countries showed that public interest in who wins the US presidential election ranges from comparatively high in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon to very low in Palestine and Pakistan. Those who did express a preference preferred Obama to McCain by margins of at least 2-to-1.

Overall, citizens in Europe and Asia believe the election makes a difference to their country. Only Georgia and the Philippines preferred McCain to Obama.

Attributable to the historic nature of the 2008 US presidential race and presumed foreign policy differences between Obama and McCain, the conventional wisdom is that the race has generated unprecedented levels of interest worldwide.

Yet only in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon did the majorities of those Gallup polled voice a preference for a presidential candidate.

In Saudi Arabia, more than two-thirds of those polled, 50 percent preferred Obama versus 19 percent for McCain. This was similar in Lebanon, where 45 percent favored Obama versus 18 percent for McCain.

Fewer than half of Palestinians and Kuwaitis voiced a preference for Obama or McCain, however, as do just 30 percent of Turks. In each of these countries, the margin of preference for Obama among those who do state a preference is about 3-to-1.

Though country variations can’t be pinned to a single factor, the presence of US troops in Iraq and other Muslim countries — as well as the possibility of an impending conflict with Iran — made the perceived lack of relevance across all six countries somewhat surprising, said Gallup’s pollsters.