Guv comes to Obama's defense; McCain hits back

Posted 5/21/2008 07:00:00 AM

Gov. Bill Richardson and GOP presidential nominee John McCain are in a battle over who is better in the international arena.

The fight apparently began on Tuesday when Richardson was quoted on the Miami Herald’s blog defending Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama from an attack McCain launched after Obama suggested that he would be open to talking to Cuban leader Raul Castro.

“John McCain – like George Bush – is afraid to talk to bad guys,” Richardson was quoted on the blog as saying. “He feels safer pretending to talk tough by hiding from them. ... This is the Bush-McCain foreign policy that has failed all over the world, and it has failed to promote change in Cuba. I have successfully negotiated with Castro and many like him, and I know that Barack has the judgment and experience to nudge the Cubans toward a better future.”

The McCain campaign, in a statement released by the Republican National Committee, hit back.

“Bill Richardson’s comical attempt to turn placating our enemies into an act of toughness is premised on a notion that most Americans know couldn’t be further from the truth – that John McCain is afraid to talk to bad guys,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said. “Gov. Richardson has had tea with a few of world’s worst dictators. John McCain has not only talked tough but been tough in encounters with more bad guys than Bill Richardson will ever meet.”

“The idea that he is afraid to stand up to anyone for the interests and values of this country is as preposterous an idea as the tired cliché that he is running for President Bush’s third term,” Bounds said. “The American people know John McCain, and they have no doubts about his toughness or that he is his own man. The same can’t be said for Gov. Richardson and the candidate he eventually decided to support.”