Obama changes focus to domestic issues

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By Ed Tibbetts | Thursday, July 31, 2008 |

Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., second from left, listens to Iowa flood victims today at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. From left are, Robin Morris, Obama, Katherine Marcano, Iowa Gov. Chet Culver and Scott Jamieson. The museum was also damaged by the flood in June. (AP Photo)

UPDATED: CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama touted his energy policies here today, arguing that drilling offshore won’t produce any oil for at least 10 years. He also accused rival John McCain of doing the bidding of oil companies that are making record profits.

Obama held a town hall meeting here and also visited victims of the June flooding as he set about refocusing his campaign on domestic issues in the wake of a much-publicized tour of Europe.

Before a packed gymnasium on the Coe College campus here, Obama called for greater fuel-efficiency standards for cars, pushed a rebate to help consumers deal with high gas prices and said oil companies ought to drill on land they’ve already leased.

He said that drilling offshore, which he opposes, wouldn’t have an effect for years and added McCain is raising hundreds of thousands of dollars from oil executives after backing drilling himself.

“That’s not a strategy to solve our energy crisis,” he said. “It’s a strategy to get a politician through an election.”

Republicans say that Democrats are causing some of the problems with oil prices by preventing drilling offshore and in a sensitive area of Alaska.

McCain spokesperson Wendy Riemann responded: "Sen. Obama is audacious enough to attack John McCain for being in the pocket of special interest groups, but it was he himself who voted for the Bush-Cheney energy bill, which was laced with pork (and) widely seen as a multibillion dollar giveaway to big oil and special interests.”

Obama also argued Thursday his campaign is focused on solving the real economic problems in the country, while McCain tries to distract people. He responded to a new McCain ad that likens his popularity to that of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, by asking, “Is that the best you can come up with?”

He also responded in an interview to a charge leveled by McCain’s campaign manager Thursday that Obama was playing the “race card” when he said in Missouri yesterday that he’s being portrayed as risky because he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills.”

“It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong,” Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, said.

Obama accused McCain’s camp of taking “false umbrage” as a way of distracting from the issues.

“Nobody was playing the race card. What I said, which I think should be apparent because they’re constantly trying to remind people of it, is that I don’t have the typical biography of a presidential candidate,” he said. “They’re spending every day with something new. Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, a phony charge that somehow I wouldn’t visit troops. Now it’s this.”

Aides say Obama has used the same language in the past and nobody objected.

Obama, who won the Iowa caucuses back in January, was visiting the state for the first time since late May, when he clinched his party’s nomination. He had planned a June trip here but canceled when severe flooding was inundating the area.

Before his town hall meeting at Coe, he told flood victims the federal government needs to be a strong, swift and effective partner to help the state recover. The Illinois senator met with a handful of flood victims and city and state officials in hollowed-out Czech Village on this city’s southwest side.

Damage estimates from the flood here are at $1 billion, but Congress delayed consideration of a measure to provide flood relief to the Midwest.

“We have tens of thousands of people who are hurting,” said Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, who was one of seven people who met with Obama at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library.

The museum, in the middle of Czech Village was mostly underwater during the flood, and Obama and the flood victims talked underneath a chandelier that was nearly swamped with floodwaters last month.

Mostly, Obama listened to flood victims and didn’t voice an opinion on the government’s response to the flood in the approximately 30 minutes that reporters were allowed to listen in.

Later, however, he said in the interview that while the Federal Emergency Management Agency performed well in its initial response, “we’re still seeing an achingly slow process for getting money out the door,” he said.

Participants in the roundtable clearly told him there were problems in the recovery effort.

Scott Jamieson, chief executive of Horizons, a nonprofit, said it had no debt before the flood, but the consequences of that are the federal government is offering it only loans to recover, while other agencies whose books were “a mess” are getting access to grants.

Paul Morris, who with his wife runs a coffee shop downtown, said they, too, were being offered loans to rebuild while others who were being offered grants.

“We already have loans on the business (that we took out) to start it,” he said.

Ed Tibbetts can be contacted at (563) 383-2327 or etibbetts@qctimes.com.