Senator Hillary Clinton on Saturday likened her Democratic White House rival Senator Barack Obama to US President George W. Bush, arguing he was an untested neophyte who would be a "leap of faith" for voters.
The New York senator briefed reporters aboard her "Hill Force One" campaign plane when it was finally airborne from California, after a technical gremlin forced the pilots to abort take-off half-way down the runway.
"We cannot afford to elect someone as we did with George [W.] Bush and then be somewhat surprised by the decisions that are made, the direction that he leads the country," Clinton said en route to a campaign stop here.
PHOTO: AFP
The former first lady has described Obama as a charismatic politician -- but stressed that voters had regretted their decision to vote for Bush because of his own charm and likability.
Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, said in December that Obama was not ready for the world's most powerful job, suggesting that voters backing the Illinois senator would "roll the dice" on the presidency.
Clinton refused to predict the outcome of "Super Tuesday" when 22 states will be in play for the Democratic nomination, but said either she or her African-American colleague "would change history by becoming president."
"The question is who would change the country. I believe that I am both tested and ready to turn the economy around, to beat the Republicans, and to be commander-in-chief on day one," she said.
"I'm not asking voters to take a leap of faith. You know where I stand, you know my record. I've been vetted, I've been tested, probably more than anybody in the country who's in politics right now," she said.
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said the latest attack "sounds like that the say anything, do anything of the Clinton campaign."
"I'm pretty sure people understand they're not taking a leap of faith with Barack Obama ... People want a break from that past, they want a different kind of future and they want real change," he said.
Super Tuesday is an unprecedented challenge for the Democratic and Republican candidates as they cross the country for what is effectively a national primary.
"There's never been anybody having to do this before so obviously we're all making it up as we go. But I feel good, very good about where we are in a lot of the states," Clinton said.
The former first lady gave a nod towards pundits who do not expect Super Tuesday to yield a decisive win for either Democrat, extending the nomination race into later voting states such as Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
"We obviously hoped to wrap it up sooner instead of later. But for however long it might take, I'm going to be there contesting in every state, in every place, to get to the nomination," she said.
Obama has tried to depress Clinton's chances by pointing to her vote in 2002 in support of Bush's use of military force against Iraq, and this week called her a "bridge back to the 20th century."
Clinton, who has refused to renounce her Iraq vote, said that the troubled US economy rather than the war was what mattered to voters now.
Addressing a rally at the University of Arizona in Tucson, she castigated Bush's economic policies and vowed to "rebuild a prosperous middle class, which is the backbone of our economy."
At least one woman fainted in the university hall's airless heat. There were loud cheers as the former first lady's daughter Chelsea hurried over to give aid with a bottle of water.
But droves of older people and parents with young children voted with their feet to escape the heat and leave the rally early, and Clinton cut short her stump speech.
She was running at least two hours late after a faulty cockpit light forced the pilots to abruptly throttle back the engines during take-off at California's Burbank airport. Technicians eventually gave the all-clear.
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