Axelrod Exclusive: Obama Strategist Rips McCain, Defends Himself Against Lobbying Charges

Sam Stein
The Huffington Post

Barack Obama's chief strategist leveled the campaign's harshest counterattack yet over John McCain's recent rhetoric on national security issues, and defended himself against charges that threaten to make him a focus of the campaign tit-for-tat in the coming months.

In a wide-ranging interview on Wednesday with The Huffington Post, David Axelrod began with a bit of political thunder, accusing McCain of failing to question the White House as it used "deception and propaganda to essentially lead America to war."

"What does all his experience get us?" asked Obama's strategic guru. "What do all those visits [to Iraq] get us?"

He continued: "The fact that he goes to Iraq and gets a tour apparently does little to provoke the kinds of questions that should be asked, and what Sen. Obama has been asking since the beginning. So it is not a question of longevity in government. It is a question of judgment, it is a question of a willingness to challenge policies that have failed. And he seems just dug in."

Axelrod was responding to criticism that Obama had not made a recent trip to Iraq and, as such, lacked the gravitas to navigate the hostile Middle East waters. His counter-argument seemed likely to outline much of the foreign policy debate that will dominate the general election.

"We are talking on a day where the president's press secretary released a book where they frankly acknowledged that they engaged in deception and propaganda to essentially lead America to war. Senator Obama saw through that and raised the appropriate questions. Sen. McCain didn't," he said.

Axelrod also lambasted McCain for accusing Obama of being naive in his willingness to meet with world leaders both friend and foe.

"I guess the question is, if you had a chance to make progress on some of these issues that go to the security of our country and the world, why would you say you would never be willing to? It is an odd thing to say. What Sen. Obama is saying in essence is that we need to use all the tools in our toolbox when we are working and fighting for our security, including for aggressive diplomacy, which has been shunned by the Bush administration to our detriment."

(Continued here.)