Candidates Fight for Votes in Battleground States

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• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  After starting the day talking about taxes, John McCain turned to national security this afternoon in Tampa, Florida, where he attempted to paint Democrat Barack Obama as unprepared to lead.

• SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-Ariz.):

  My fellow Americans, we're going to get through this economic crisis. We will get through it. And we will even come out stronger, without the corruption and arrogance that have overtaken both Washington and Wall Street.

  We're going to pull through these hard times and do it together, just as our country has done before.

  But when that day arrives and the worries of financial crisis have fallen away, we will find awaiting our country all of the same great challenges and dangers that were there all along. They mattered before the economic turmoil of the present; they will matter still when it has passed.

  And in a time of war, at a moment of danger for our country and the world, let it not be said of us that we lost sight of these challenges.

  With terrorists still plotting new strikes across the world, millions of innocent lives are still at stake, including American lives. Our enemies' violent ambitions must still be prevented by American vigilance, by diplomacy and cooperation with our partners, and by force of arms as a last resort.

  In his four years in the Senate, two of them spent running for president, Barack Obama has displayed some impressive qualities. But the question is whether this is a man who has what it takes to protect America from Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida, and other grave threats in the world.

  And he has given you no reason to answer in the affirmative.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  The Obama campaign rejected McCain's attack in a statement, saying, "When the next president is tested, the American people can have John McCain's judgment of siding with George Bush and Dick Cheney on every major national security decision, or they can have the steady leadership and sound judgment of Barack Obama that has earned the support of Americans like General Colin Powell."

  McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, was in Toledo, Ohio, this morning, focusing on energy independence. She accused the Democratic ticket of resisting alternatives to foreign oil, such as clean coal, nuclear power, and off-shore drilling.

• GOV. SARAH PALIN (R-Alaska):

  Technology has come such a long way. Again, they don't get it. They need to understand the science behind all of this today.

  And those cleaner, safer technologies are far likelier to be used in the U.S. and in Canada than by China, or India, or other developing nations. It's here. Well, they will be produced in environmentally friendly manners and protecting the workers, much more likely here than in these developing countries.

  So policies that forego domestic production don't protect our environment. They simply accelerate and reward dirtier and more dangerous methods of production elsewhere in countries that apply few, if any, environmental or workplace safeguards.

  While our opponents like to posture as defenders of the environment, in practice their refusal to support more domestic production does nothing more than harm — it ultimately harms our environment. It doesn't do any good.