HARRISBURG, Pa. — Republican John McCain told voters in this key electoral state Tuesday that he was personally tested by the same kind of crisis that Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden warned Barack Obama will almost certainly face if elected.
McCain recalled being ready to launch a bombing run during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, which Biden said over the weekend tested a new President Kennedy and was the template for the kind of “generated crisis” Obama would face within six months of taking office. “I was on board the USS Enterprise,” McCain, a former naval aviator, said at a rally. “I sat in the cockpit, on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise, off of Cuba. I had a target. My friends, you know how close we came to a nuclear war.”
As the crowd of several thousand began to swell with cheers and applause, he added with dramatic effect: “America will not have a president who needs to be tested. I’ve been tested.”
Biden told two fundraising audiences in Seattle over the weekend that he expected world figures to test Obama early if he wins.
