WASHINGTON (AP) - Back from a highly publicized week abroad, Democrat Barack Obama pressed to return to a debate on fixing the troubledU.S. economy, but Republican opponent John McCain pushed onward with attacks on the Illinois senator's international qualifications, saying his rival "doesn't understand what's at stake" in Iraq.
At a time when all the major polls show U.S. voters consumed primarily with economic issues - growing joblessess, high fuel costs, rising food prices and a crisis in home financing - Obama's overseas trip last week reignited the campaign debate over pulling troops out of Iraq and strengthening the fighting force in Afghanistan.
In one of the most striking lines of the campaign, McCain said during a town hall meeing Tuesday in New Hampshire that "Sen. Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." He was referring to Obama's continuing call for the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office, a plan that was conditionally endorsed last week by the Iraqi leader.
In an interview with ABC television that was broadcast Sunday, McCain appeared to soften that remark but did not withdraw it.
"Sen. Obama doesn't understand. He doesn't understand what's at stake here (in Iraq). And he chose to take a political path that would have helped him get the nomination of his pary. ... And if we'd done what Sen. Obama wanted done, it would have been chaos, genocide, increased Iranian influence, perhaps al-Qaida establishing a base again," the four-term Arizona senator told ABC.
McCain said he was not questioning Obama's patriotism, though his remarks produced a significant backlah.
On Sunday, fellow Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a longtime McCain friend who accompanied Obama to Iraq, urged the Republican candidate to move away from such stridency.
"John's better than that," said Hagel, a frequent Iraq war critic.
"I think John is treading on some very thin gound here when he impugns motives," Hagel said in a CBS television interview.
Hagel, a Vietnam war veteran, said that "it's just not responsible to be saying things like that."
In an interview taped Saturday in London with NBC television, Obama held fast to having refused to back the addition of 30,00 American forces last year in Iraq, the so-called "surge" that has been credited in part with bringing down violence. Obama contended from the outset that the Iraq war was distracting from what he sees as the far greater danger from the Taliban and al-Qaida that are resurgent in Afghanistan and inside Paktan.
"My job as the next commander in chief is going to be to make a decision what is the right war to fight, and, and how do we fight it? And I think that we should have been focused on Afghanistan from the start. We should have finished that job. We have not, but we now have the opportunity, moving forard, to begin a phased redeployment (from Iraq) and to make sure that we're finishing the job in Afghanistan," Obama said in the Sunday broadcast.
In an Associated Press interview aboard Obama's plane as he returned from London, the Democratic candidate said he intended to shift his focus quickly toward the economy and other domestic issues in the coming days.
Depending on actions the current administration and Congress take, he told AP a new economic stimulus package may be his first legislative request from lawmakers if he takes office as the 44th president in January. He has called previously for additional tax rebates and other measures to help revive the economy, and intends to convene a meeting on the subject on Monday in Washington.
He told NBC that he would be meeting with economic advisers, including investor Warren Buffett; Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google; former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker; Clinton administration treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers as well as Robert Reich, who served Bill Clinton as secretary of labor.
Both candidates were in agreement to a degree in blaming America's lack of planning for the country's current economic crisis.
"I will embark on an immediate ... effort to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil - nuclear power, offshore drilling, wind, tide, solar - and stop this drain of $700 billion a year from the American economy. This administration - for 30 years, Congress and the administrations have not done anything on this energy crisis," McCain said in the ABC interview.
Obama followed similar reasoning, while proposing different solutions.
"The fact of the matter is that we should have, over the last 20 years, been planning for this day," Obama told NBC.
McCain meawhile told ABC he supports a proposed ballot initiative in his home state that would prohibit preferential policies for minorities from state and local governments. A decade ago, he called a similar effort "divisive."
Over the years, McCain has consistently voiced his opposition to hiring quotas based on race. He has supported affirmative action in limited cases. For example, he voted to maintain a program that encourages the awarding of 10 percent of spending on highway construction to women and minorities.
McCain was asked specifically Sunday whether he supported an effort to get a referendum on the ballot in Arizona that would "do away with affirmative action."
"Yes, I do," said McCain in an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC's "This Week."
The Republican senator quickly added that he had not seen the details of the proposal. "But I've always opposed quotas."
Speaking to a conference of minority journalists on Sunday, Obama said McCain was embracing divisive tactics.
"I think in the past he had been opposed to these kinds of Ward Connerly referenda or initiatives as divisive. And I think he's right," Obama said, referring to a leading critic of affirmative action.
Affirmative actions programs by the federal and state governments are designed to insure American minorities have equal educational and economic opportunities.