PHILADELPHIA — Democrat Barack Obama made a slight nod to his Republican rival Saturday, and then Obama asked voters to have faith in him as the next president.
Even as he criticized John McCain’s economic policies, Obama acknowledged that the Republican nominee has asked his supporters to temper their attacks on him.
“I appreciated his reminder that we can disagree while still being respectful of each other,” Obama told thousands of supporters at the first of four rallies in Philadelphia.
“Sen. McCain has served this country with honor,” he said two hours later, in the Germantown neighborhood. “He deserves our thanks for that.”
At an event Friday in Minnesota, McCain took the microphone from a woman who said Obama is an Arab. McCain said, “No, ma’am,” and he called Obama “a decent, family man.”
Those reassurances aside, McCain’s TV ads continue to attack Obama sharply. Some hit his ties to a former radical who co-founded a violent anti-war group in the 1960s. Obama referred to the ads Saturday.
“We’ve seen rough stuff on the TV from them,” he said. “I can take it for four more weeks,” but the nation cannot take “four more years of Bush- McCain economics.”
