Roundup: Palin begins opening up to media, public
— -- Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, continuing his swing through the West, is doing double duty Thursday in New Mexico with a rally and a fundraiser. He picked the picturesque town of Espanola, north of Santa Fe for a campaign stop where he will be joined by New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.
The Illinois senator, who chose not to take federal campaign funds, will follow the rally with a fundraiser in Albuquerque.
The Republican ticket is also on the move, targeting the Midwest battleground.
Sen. John McCain teams up for the second straight day with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for a rally at an airport hangar five miles outside Cedar Rapids, Iowa. They will then head for a second campaign stop in Green Bay, Wis.
Palin's reappearance alongside McCain comes as the vice presidential nominee begins fielding more questions, from the public and the media.
She was interviewed by Fox News host Sean Hannity Wednesday, in her second TV interview since her nomination.
But she also has stepped up during a town hall rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., where she interrupted the top of the ticket as he was discussing the war in Iraq.
"John, John, can I add something?" she said as McCain answered a question from the audience.
McCain, smiling, replied, "Always."
Palin argued that McCain's support for sending thousands more U.S. troops to Iraq put the country on the cusp of victory and was freeing it to focus elsewhere in its battle against terrorists.
"We must win there so that we can win in Afghanistan also," Palin said. "He knows how to win a war."
Palin also rebuffed criticism that she doesn't have enough foreign policy experience to assume the presidency, if necessary.
"If you want specifics and specific policy or countries, go ahead, you can ask me. You can even play stump-the-candidate if you want," Palin challenged her questioner.
Meanwhile, Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel contends in an interview published Thursday that Palin, lacks foreign policy experience and calls it a "stretch" to say she's qualified to be president.
"She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials," Hagel told the Omaha World-Herald. "You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything."
Obama's vice presidential pick, Sen. John Biden, is also working the Midwest, with a stop at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, and a campaign stop in Youngstown, Ohio.
Michelle Obama, the wife of the Democratic nominees, makes a swing through Charlotte and Greensboro in North Carolina.
In a morning TV appearance, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden took on the tax issue, saying that people earning more than $250,000 a year would pay more in taxes under an Obama administration.
"It's time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut," the Delaware senator said on ABC's Good Morning America.
He said the Obama plan would reduce taxes on 95% of Americans.
"We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people," Biden said.
The McCain campaign, in a new TV ad released Thursday, claims that Obama would increase the size of the federal government amid an economic crisis. Contending that "a big government casts a big shadow on us all," the ad features the image of a shadow slowly covering a sleeping baby as a narrator misstates the reach of the Obama tax proposal.
"Obama and his liberal congressional allies want a massive government, billions in spending increases, wasteful pork," the ad says. "And we would pay — painful income taxes, skyrocketing taxes on life savings, electricity and home heating oil. Can your family afford that?"