by John McCormick
OSHKOSH, Wis. – A day after Hillary Clinton suggested – again – that Barack Obama is all talk and no action, the Illinois Democrat responded here with a new riff that challenges her suggestion.
“Her argument, I think, yesterday was, ‘Well, Obama’s a talker and I’m a doer. He makes speeches. I offer solutions,'” Obama said. “Now, I understand that as we get further and further along in this process, some of the arguments get sillier and sillier.”
Obama then launched into a list of legislative accomplishments in both the Illinois Senate and U.S. Senate, although he did fail to acknowledge any help from any of his fellow lawmakers.
“When I brought Democrats and Republicans together to have health insurance in Illinois, that wasn’t talk,” he said. “When I fixed our criminal justice system to prevent wrongful convictions in Illinois, that wasn’t talk. When I worked with Republicans on nuclear proliferation issues, that wasn’t talk. So, she’s exactly right that speeches aren’t enough. That’s why I’ve been working for the last 20 years to provide real solutions to the American people.”
Obama went on to criticize Clinton for her past support of the North American Free Trade Agreement, as he has been prone to do in recent days.
Then, the always confident senator, couldn’t help but offer himself some more praise: “It’s true. I give a good speech. What can I do? Nothing wrong with that,” he said.
And while it is perfectly clear that there will be no Wisconsin debate before the state’s primary Tuesday, the debate over debates continues to linger.
Clinton’s campaign has issued another Wisconsin ad that suggests Obama is a chicken when it comes to going one-on-one with the former first lady.
“Barack Obama still won’t agree to debate in Wisconsin,” the Clinton ad says. “And now he’s hiding behind false attack ads.”
Earlier today, at a news conference in Milwaukee, Obama said he has participated in 18 debates already and that he needs the time to meet with voters.
“I understand Sen. Clinton, periodically, when she is feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal,” Obama said in Milwaukee.
Plus, Obama said, he practically knows Clinton’s lines as well as she does.
“The debate exercise is one that I think has become fairly predictable,” he said. “I could make the arguments on behalf of Sen. Clinton that she would make against me in a debate. We all know them. You guys could to. I’m sure the same applies on the other side.”
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Obama mentioned “slogans”‘ at the rally here inside a field house at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, just as he did earlier at the Milwaukee news conference.
“Yesterday, Sen. Clinton unveiled her latest in a long line of slogans, which argues that she’s proposed solutions while others have not,” Obama said in Milwaukee. “I don’t want to get into sort of the tit-for-tat here. The problem is not the lack of good ideas. It’s that Washington today is the place where good ideas go to die.”
Obama, who was formally endorsed this afternoon by the powerful Service Employees International Union, said he expects additional union endorsements to be coming his way in the coming days.
“The reason I think they’re moving in our direction is they recognize that we have the opportunity to build the kind of coalitions that strengthen the union movement,” he said.
Asked at the press conference whether he has any plans to give up his senate seat, one he has only held since 2005, as some have suggested Republican front-runner Sen. John McCain might do, Obama demurred. “It’s not something that’s come up,” he said.
Obama also downplayed a recent National Journal rating that listed him as the most liberal member of the Senate.
“There is no doubt that Senator McCain and I have different political philosophies,” he said. “The National Journal ratings, I have to say, I’m a little skeptical of because apparently one of the examples that they use to grade how liberal you are is whether or not you supported an office of public integrity that would independently investigate ethics violations in the House and the Senate. The notion that that’s a liberal concept as opposed to a common sense concept designed to ensure the integrity of the Congress gives you some sense of how these categories of liberal and conservative, I don’t think really work.”