Phillies back in the McCain-Obama race

Campaigning yesterday in Bucks County, Republican presidential candidate John McCain said the way Barack Obama has dealt with the World Series reflects his approach to more substantive matters.

Democrat Obama, in Florida for a jobs conference put together by his campaign, blamed the Republicans for what he called a wrongheaded response to the economic crisis - and reasserted his support for the Phillies.

McCain, at a morning rally at a factory in Bensalem, told a crowd of fewer than 1,000 people that he was "not dumb enough to get mixed up in a World Series between swing states" but that he thought he had "detected a little pattern" with Obama.

"When he's campaigning in Philadelphia, he roots for the Phillies," McCain said, referring to remarks Obama made during his Oct. 11 visit here, "and when he's campaigning in Tampa Bay, he shows love to the Rays.

"It's kind of like the way he campaigns for tax cuts but then votes for tax increases after he's elected."

Obama responded in a satellite interview with 6ABC, saying he wanted to keep his campaign manager, David Plouffe, a Delawarean who has Phillies gear in his office, happy until Election Day.

"I've said it before, I'll say it again. I've got to go with the Phillies on this," Obama said, who praised the Rays as well. ". . . This may be their year. They haven't had one for a long time."

In another development, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin told CNN that she had regrets about comments she made last week in a speech in Greensboro, N.C. There, she called North Carolina a "pro-America" part of the country, thereby implying that other regions were not patriotic.

"I don't want that misunderstood," said Palin, who is scheduled to be in Western Pennsylvania tomorrow. ". . . I certainly don't want that interpreted as one area being more patriotic or more American than another. If that's the way it's come across, I apologize."

McCain spent the entire day in Pennsylvania, stopping in Harrisburg and the Pittsburgh area. Today, he will go to New Hampshire, one of the few other blue states in which he is competing.

In Harrisburg, he talked about recent comments by Democratic vice presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden Jr., who predicted that Obama, if elected, would be tested by an international crisis within the first six months of his administration.

McCain said he had already lived through such a situation, recalling how, as a Navy pilot during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, he had sat in a plane on an aircraft carrier, ready to bomb Cuba.

"America will not have a president who needs to be tested," McCain said. "I've been tested, my friends."

McCain trails Obama by 10 percentage points in a new Pennsylvania tracking poll done by Muhlenberg College for the Allentown Morning Call. He is down by an average of seven points in national surveys.

Gov. Rendell, an Obama backer, told reporters: "The biggest foe we face is not John McCain, it's not Sarah Palin. The biggest foe we face is overconfidence."

In Lake Worth, Fla., Obama told the jobs conference that the nation needed a different kind of economic leadership.

"Yesterday, I heard Sen. McCain say that I'm more concerned with who gets your piece of the pie than with growing the pie," he said. "But make no mistake about it. After eight years of Bush-McCain economics, the pie is now shrinking."

Obama said Bush and McCain had offered "little more than willful ignorance, wishful thinking and outdated ideology."

McCain said he, too, would give a "new direction" in economic policy by cutting taxes, creating jobs, and protecting home values by buying up bad mortgages.

Obama is scheduled to leave the campaign trail tomorrow to fly to Hawaii to visit his ailing 85-year-old grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham. He said she was "gravely ill."

In Bensalem, McCain was introduced by his wife, Cindy, and by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), his friend and colleague. Graham reminded the crowd of Obama's comments last April about "bitter" small-town Pennsylvanians who "cling" to their guns and religion.

"If he becomes president," Graham said, "you better cling to your guns. Because he's going to come after them."

Obama has said that he believes the Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms. In a questionnaire from his 1996 Illinois state Senate campaign, he appeared to support a state ban on handguns. He has since said that an aide filled out the questionnaire and that he never backed such a ban.

Among those in the crowd in Bensalem were David and Amy Abecunas of Northeast Philadelphia. He is a McCain supporter. She is undecided. And he brought her in hopes of getting her to go along with him.

"For me, it comes down to national security," said David Abecunas, 35, a registered Democrat who considers himself a Republican. "I don't trust Obama on it, and McCain is way ahead of him."

But when McCain had finished speaking, Amy Abecunas was still undecided.

In Harrisburg, Sue Easton, 72, a homemaker from York County, left the rally fired up for the election, which she believes McCain will win.

"I feel like there is a quiet majority out there who will come through for him at the polls," said Easton, adding that she would be "afraid for our nation" if Obama wins the presidency.