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Obama, Bill Clinton to Campaign Together

President Barack Obama and Bill Clinton will campaign together Monday, opening the final full week before Election Day with a three-state battleground blitz.

The joint rallies underscore Clinton's role as perhaps Obama's most important surrogate in the tightly contested White House race with Republican Mitt Romney. In campaign events, television advertisements and a well-regarded speech at the Democratic convention, the former president has been a chief defender of Obama's economic record, winning praise for sometimes explaining that record better than Obama himself.

Editor's Notes:

The two will headline rallies Monday in Orlando, Fla., Youngstown, Ohio, and Prince William County, Va. It's the first time Obama and Clinton will campaign together during this election, though they have shared the stage at fundraisers and appeared together briefly at the party convention.

The three states are among the biggest electoral prizes up for grabs in the Nov. 6 election. Polls show Obama has an edge in Ohio, but Romney has whittled away the president's earlier leads in Florida and Virginia.

For Obama and Clinton, the rallies serve as another benchmark in a year that has solidified their transition from political rivals to allies.

Following his convention speech, Clinton has made a series of solo appearances on Obama's behalf. A high-profile event in Ohio last week also featured Bruce Springsteen.

Clinton has also appeared in campaign ads, including one out this week where the former president argues that Obama "got it right" with his economic agenda. And he's helped both Obama's campaign and the main super political action committee supporting him raise money.

Obama advisers are banking that Clinton's presence on the campaign trail will shore up the Democratic base. And they hope undecided voters will draw a connection between Obama's policies and the ones Clinton pushed when he presided over a thriving economy.

© Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.



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Colin Powell Backs Obama for Second Term

Former Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed President Barack Obama for a second term Thursday, telling “CBS This Morning” that he voted for Obama in 2008 but this time was going further and publicly backing him.

“We’ve come out of the dive and we’re starting to gain altitude,” Powell said. “The unemployment rate is too high, people are still hurting in housing, but I see that we’re starting to rise up.”

Editor's Notes:

Powell said that when Obama took over “the country was in very, very difficult straits. We were in the one of the worst recessions we had seen in recent times, close to a depression.”

“The fiscal system was collapsing: Wall Street was in chaos, we had 800,000 jobs lost in that first month of the Obama administration,” he said. “Unemployment peaked at 10 percent, so we were in real trouble. The auto industry was collapsing, housing was started to collapse, and we were in very difficult straits.

“And I saw over the next several years stabilization come back in the financial community,” Powell added. “Housing is now starting to come back after four years; it's starting to pick up. Consumer confidence is rising."

The four-star general also said that Obama “got us out of one war, started to get us out of a second war, and did not get us into any new wars.”

“The actions he has taken in respect to protecting us from terrorism have been very solid,” Powell said. “We ought to keep on the track we are on.”

Powell served as secretary of state during George W. Bush’s first term. He was also national security adviser in the last years of the Reagan administration and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff from 1989-1993.

He told CBS he still considers himself a Republican. "I think I'm a Republican of a more moderate mold — that's something of a dying breed I'm sorry to say."

During his CBS appearance, Powell criticized GOP candidate Mitt Romney’s foreign policy, saying his positions in Monday night’s debate were “quite different from what he said earlier.”

"I'm not quite sure which Governor Romney we would be getting with respect to foreign policy," he added. “One day he has a certain strong view about staying in Afghanistan but then on Monday night he agrees with the withdrawal — same thing in Iraq.”

On Romney’s domestic policy, Powell said, "As I listen to what his proposals are especially with respect to dealing with respect to our most significant issue — the economy — it's essentially: ‘Let's cut taxes and compensate for that with other things,’ but that compensation does not cover all the cuts intended or the new expenses associated with defense."

© 2012 Newsmax. All rights reserved.