Obama plays to packed house

By SCOTT McMILLION Chronicle Staff Writer

When Barack Obama entered the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse, the cavernous room began to thunder with applause and cheers and whistles. Then, with just a smile and a wave from the presidential candidate, the crowd got even louder. And they didn’t sit down until he told them to.

SEAN SPERRY/CHRONICLE Democratic candidate Barack Obama shakes hands with the crowd before taking the stage Monday in the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse at Montana State. The senator from Illinois, now widely considered the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States, lived up to his rock-star status before at least 7,000 excited fans at the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse on Monday.

Though he appeared understandably tired after 15 months of campaigning, Obama energized the Montana crowd with his appeals to American populism and his glee in the fact that George W. Bush’s name won’t be on the ballot in November.

He cracked jokes about hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney, elicited a round of boos when he mentioned record oil company profits, and called his Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, “an extraordinary public servant” with whom he agrees on 90 percent of the issues.

As for Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, the Republican nominee, Obama repeatedly tarred him with the Bush brush, saying he is “running for George Bush’s third term.”

He said he’s running for the highest office in the land because the country can wait no longer to solve its problems. He called it “the fierce urgency of now."

The nation’s schools need help, he said. Students need better preparation for the 21st century economy, teachers deserve more money and college is too expensive.

The nation needs to wean itself from foreign fossil fuels and invest $150 billion in alternative energy.

The natural world needs “an Environmental Protection Agency that actually believes in protecting the environment.”

The war in Iraq needs to be ended by 2009.

Global warming is real and needs to be fixed. “We’re paying $3.80 a gallon at the pump and melting the polar ice cap in the process,” he said.

Everybody should have health insurance and the country needs a system that focuses on preserving health instead of treating disease, one that benefits people instead of drug and insurance companies.

All of these issues need immediate attention, he said.

“And that’s why I’m running for president,” he told the crowd, through frequent interruptions of applause.

Montana Republicans are trying to convince people he’s the wrong man for the job.

“He’s out of step with the vast majority of Montanans,” state GOP chairman Erik Iverson said in a telephone news conference before Obama’s appearance.

Iverson portrayed Obama as hurtful to Montana schools because he supports a tax on coal, the mining of which could benefit the school trust fund. He also accused Obama of supporting gun control laws and criticized him for opposing McCain’s proposal to provide a three-month break from federal gas taxes.

Obama dismissed McCain’s idea - also supported by Clinton - as a gimmick. It would save individuals, at most, $28, he said, and the oil companies would “keep their prices high and pocket the difference.”

He proposed paying for his many ideas by closing corporate tax loopholes and eliminating tax breaks for companies that transfer jobs overseas. Plus, vast sums could be saved by ending the “unwise” war in Iraq, which costs $10 billion a month.

“We could spend some of that money in the United States of America,” he said.

Nationwide, Republicans have scorned Obama on his foreign policy positions, particularly his suggestion of talking to nations like Iran. But Obama said he welcomes a debate on those issues. He accused McCain and the Bush administration of fear mongering and noted that, in Iraq, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, thousands of lives have been lost and billions of dollars have been spent.

“These guys talk tough but they’re incompetent,” Obama said. “Now they say we’re the ones who are naïve and incompetent.”

He promised to keep the nation safe, restore its status in the eyes of the world, finish the job in Afghanistan, focus on stopping nuclear proliferation and lead efforts to end genocide in Darfur.

Montana and South Dakota have the last primaries of the year, and Obama promised to win.

“On June 3, we’re going to bring this nomination to a close right here in Montana,” he vowed.

He also pleaded for unity among Democrats after an extraordinarily long primary campaign. Republicans will try to shift the focus away from issues and make people nervous about him, Obama said.

“He’s got a funny name. Maybe he’s a Muslim,” he predicted they’ll say. “They want to make people worry about me.”

He said his campaign so far has focused mostly on the positive, but winning in November won’t be easy.

“The status quo never gives up power easily,” he said. “We want somebody to bring an end to the game playing in Washington. We’ve got to take back our government.”

Scott McMillion can be reached at scottm@dailychronicle.com.

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