Obama On His Reach-Across-The-Aisle Record

From Jake Tapper, here is a question that the McCain campaign has been waiting for a reporter to ask Barack Obama:

TAPPER: You and Senator John McCain are both talking about the need to reach across the partisan divide.
OBAMA: Right.
TAPPER: It's not difficult to look at Senator McCain's record and see examples of times when he reached across the partisan divide at great political risk to himself: immigration reform, Gang of 14, campaign finance reform. I know that you have worked across the aisle.

OBAMA: Absolutely.

TAPPER: But have you ever worked across the aisle in such a way that entailed a political risk for yourself?

OBAMA: Well, look, when I was doing ethics reform legislation, for example, that wasn't popular with Democrats or Republicans. So any time that you actually try to get something done in Washington, it entails some political risks. But I think the basic principle which you pointed out is that I have consistently said, when it comes to solving problems, like nuclear proliferation or reducing the influence of lobbyists in Washington, that I don't approach this from a partisan or ideological perspective.

And the same is true when it comes to the economy. The same is true when it comes to national security. You know, this administration, the Bush administration, has made, for example, the war on terror into a sharply partisan issue.

But the truth is, is that I admire some of the foreign policy of George Bush's father. And I've said so before. I think that there's a tradition of us working together to make sure that we are dealing with the threats that are out there and that we are building a consensus here in the United States. That's the kind of approach I intend to take when I'm president of the United States.

Watch for the McCain campaign to make this one of the centerpieces of their change argument -- that McCain has taken stands that caused him to go out of the GOP comfort zone and Obama has never taken a risk on anything that would cause him trouble with liberals.