Sen. John McCain vowed Wednesday to break the partisan deadlock on energy policy, saying the dependence on foreign oil puts the U.S. in a “dangerous situation.”

“When we buy foreign oil, we are enriching some of our worst enemies,” he said in Las Vegas, Nevada.

McCain said that if he were to become president, he would put the country “on a course to energy security.”

“Three decades of partisan paralysis on energy security is enough. Since I am not president, I cannot say the buck stops here, but I will say that it must stop now,” he said.

McCain said he would “authorize and support new exploration and production of America’s own oil and gas reserves, because we can’t outsource the solution to America’s energy problem.”

McCain proposed lifting the ban on offshore drilling last week as part of his plan to reduce dependence on foreign oil and help combat rising gas prices.

Officials from many coastal states oppose offshore drilling because of the risk of oil spills. Environmentalists want to stop offshore drilling to protect oceans and beaches from further pollution.

McCain also recommended looking at nuclear power, calling it a “long-neglected source of energy.”

The senator from Arizona reiterated his push for a car battery that would move vehicles away from running on gasoline. He has proposed a $300 million reward for the development of a battery that far surpasses existing technology.

“America’s dependence on foreign oil was a troubling situation 35 years ago. It was an alarming situation 20 years ago. It’s a dangerous situation today. And starting in the term of the next president, we must take control over our own energy future and become once again the master of our fate,” he said.

“In recent days, I have set before the American people an energy plan. … And let it begin today with this commitment: In a world of hostile and unstable suppliers of oil, this nation will achieve strategic independence by 2025.”

In addition to new production and nuclear plants, McCain said that as president, he would perfect clean coal, improve the electricity grid and support new technologies that move the country away from fossil fuels.

On Tuesday, his campaign called Sen. Barack Obama the “Dr. No on energy security.”

“Today, it was ‘no’ on the $300 million for a new kind of battery. Before, it was ‘no’ on … the possibility of further exploration off our coasts. It was ‘no’ on gas tax relief that can help — this summer — families that are hurting. It was ‘no’ on expanded nuclear power investments that we can make. We think we are seeing a pattern here,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said.

Obama wrote off McCain’s energy plans as “gimmicks” that would “only increase our oil addiction for another four years.”

“What Washington has done is what Washington always does: It’s peddled false promises, irresponsible policy and cheap gimmicks that might get politicians through the next election but won’t lead America toward the next generation of renewable energy,” Obama said in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

“For decades, John McCain has been a part of this failure in Washington.”

Obama said his energy plan would include taxing profits from oil companies and using that money to help families pay their energy bills.

He also said he would “close the loophole that allows corporations like Enron to engage in unregulated speculation that ends up artificially driving up the price of oil.”

Obama said he would raise the fuel standards and invest $150 billion over the next 10 years in alternate sources of energy.

“My entire energy plan will produce three times the oil savings that John McCain’s ever could — and what’s more, it will actually decrease our dependence on oil while his will only grow our addiction further,” he said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, polls suggest that Obama holds a sizable lead over McCain in the general election matchup.

Obama leads McCain 49 percent to 37 percent in a head-to-head matchup, according to the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll. But when third-party candidates Ralph Nader and Bob Barr are added to the list, Obama’s lead over McCain extends to 15 percentage points, 48 percent to 33 percent.

The poll surveyed 1,115 registered voters and was conducted Thursday through Monday. It carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The survey is the second in a matter of days to indicate McCain may face a sizable deficit as the general election campaign kicks off. A Newsweek poll released four days ago showed the senator from Illinois with a 15-point lead.

According to a CNN analysis of five recent national surveys, Obama holds a lead of 8 percentage points over his presidential rival.
McCain said Tuesday that he’s comfortable being the underdog.

“This is a tough race. We are behind; we are the underdog. That’s what I like to be,” he said at a fundraiser in Newport Beach, California.

Today’s poll story showing Barack Obama with a 12-point lead over John McCain drew almost as much reaction from readers for what it had to say about voters’ party affiliation as for what it said about the candidates’ popularity.

The questions centered on this passage in the story: “In this national poll’s random sample of voters, 39% identified themselves as Democrats, 22% as Republicans and 27% as independents. In a similar poll a year ago, 33% identified themselves as Democrats, 28% as Republicans and 30% as independents.”

Susan Pinkus, director of the Times Poll, and Doyle McManus, Washington bureau chief, respond to the readers’ concerns:

The result for self-described Democrats seems high, acknowledged Pinkus, but, she wrote in an e-mail to readers, “This is what the poll got from a random sample of 1,233 adults nationwide, including 1,115 registered voters (which includes listed, unlisted and cell phone users).”

McManus, who reported the poll results in the front-page article, explained it in an e-mail he sent to readers who asked. He wrote, “Please note that this question is not about how people are registered. It’s about how voters identify themselves when asked, ‘Regardless of your party registration or how you have voted in the past, do you think of yourself today as a Democrat, or a Republican, or an independent, or as something else?’” The answers to that question often ebb and flow depending on the popularity of each political party.”

The article itself put it this way: “After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, for example, when President Bush’s popularity soared, the number of voters who described themselves as Republicans rose as well. During the last three years, as Bush’s popularity has slumped, the number of voters who describe themselves as Republicans has also dropped.”

As the fine print explained to readers, this poll was weighted slightly, where necessary, to conform to the Census Bureau’s proportions of sex, race, ethnicity, age and national region. However, Pinkus emphasizes, “The poll is NOT weighted for party identification, since party ID is a moving variable that changes from one election to another, or when one party may be favored more than the other.”

On that point, McManus’ went on: “There’s a long-running debate among pollsters on how to handle the ebbs and flows. In one camp, you go out and poll a random sample, and report whatever number you get. (We’re in that purist camp.) In the other camp, you ‘adjust’ the sample to bring it closer to whatever number you think is the right one — but that means the pollster is inserting his/her judgment into the process. And there’s a margin of error — in this case, plus or minus three. So our 2007 poll with 28% Republicans and our 2008 poll with 22% Republicans could reflect “real” numbers that were constant at 25%. Again, those aren’t registration numbers; they are ‘how do you think of yourself’ numbers.”

Pinkus concurs, “This number fluctuates over time.  Comparing other polling organizations’ party ID numbers, CBS News/N.Y. Times had Democrats 14 points more than Republicans,  Democracy Corps had a 12-point gap in favor of the Democrats and ABC News/Washington Post had Democrats with 14 points more than Republicans.”

(Some readers also thought that the total — 39% identifying themselves as Democrats, 22% as Republicans and 27% as independents — didn’t seem to add up. What the article didn’t note was that 8% said they consider themselves as something else, and 4% refused to say.)

Of the results published in today’s Times, Pinkus concludes: “It is early in the election and many things can happen that could shift party loyalty, but as of today, this is where the country stands.”

WASHINGTON – As she returned to the Senate for the first time since ending her campaign to become the nation’s first woman president, Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that her goal was simply to be the best senator she could. “I am rolling up my sleeves and getting back to work,” she said.

Yet despite being New York’s junior senator, ranking only 68th out of 100 in seniority without any promise of a leadership position, a committee chairmanship or even a bigger office, it was clear that Clinton will be a far more prominent figure than the usual measures might suggest.

She retains the loyalty of millions of supporters, having drawn 18 million votes before conceding the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama three weeks ago. She and her husband, Bill, remain among the country’s best-known political figures, and her words and actions will be sifted like tea leaves in the coming general election and beyond.

Acknowledging her new position, Democratic colleagues gave her a standing ovation when she arrived at their weekly lunch meeting.

Her husband chose the day of her return to take a step toward trying to end any bitterness between the Clinton and Obama camps, saying in statement that he was “committed to doing whatever he can and is asked to do to ensure Senator Obama is the next president of the United States.”

As early as Friday, Hillary Clinton will be back on the national stage, joining Obama in a symbolic visit to the New Hampshire town of Unity, where she and the Illinois senator each received 107 votes in the primary.As Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, who campaigned for her in his state’s May primary and was on hand Tuesday, put it, “I don’t think she’ll enter the witness protection program.”

“She has so much to contribute. . . . I hope she’ll embrace this opportunity, and I think she will,” Bayh said.

In remarks at the Senate Democrats’ meeting, Clinton appealed for party unity and pledged to work to elect Obama to the White House as well as to expand the party’s Senate majority.

Although she missed a vote on a housing bill Tuesday, Clinton was greeted with cheers and waves as she made her way up the steps of the Capitol. Dressed in a bright turquoise suit, she looked upbeat as she paused to shake hands with interns.

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, said it was a myth that coming back to the Senate after running for president was difficult.

“Once you’ve picked yourself up and dusted yourself off, you find that you’re a much better and more effective senator because you ran for president,” he said. “You’ve seen so much more of the country and thought through the issues differently because you’ve actually thought through how to represent states very different from your own.”

Riverside, Calif. — One of Sen. John McCain’s main strategies for overcoming the deficit he and his party face in opinion polls is to make the election about national security and terrorism.

That approach helped the Republican presidential candidate emerge victorious from the primary field, and the topic remains the top issue on which he bests his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama.

Even so, Sen. McCain risks accusations from Democrats that he is following the Bush administration by playing into the politics of fear.

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks made national security a major issue for Republicans. President Bush enjoyed strong public support in the aftermath, helping lift members of his party in 2002 and 2004 elections. In October 2004, shortly before his re-election, 77% of voters listed terrorism as very important to their vote, according to the Pew Research Center. Three years later, the survey found 69% of Americans saw it as very important.

This week, a senior McCain adviser opened the door for swipes that Republicans were playing to terrorism fears with a comment he made during an interview with Fortune magazine. Charlie Black, a McCain confidant, said a terrorist attack on the U.S. before the election would be a “big advantage” to Sen. McCain’s candidacy. Mr. Black apologized for the comment Monday, but the Democratic punches already were flying.

“Mr. Black’s comments…display a campaign mentality dedicated to the same scare tactics repeatedly used by George W. Bush,” said Greg Tarpinian, executive director of Change to Win, an umbrella organization for six unions, which has endorsed Sen. Obama. The group called for Mr. Black’s resignation.

Others disagreed. “Charlie Black was impolitic but right,” said James Lindsay, the director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin, who isn’t allied with any campaign. “The political fallout from a terrorist attack would likely help Sen. McCain.”

A Gallup survey released Tuesday revealed that 70% of Americans think Sen. McCain would do a good job of handling terrorism, compared with 49% for Sen. Obama.

What is more, 52% of respondents said Sen. McCain would do a better job on terrorism than Sen. Obama. Only a third said Sen. Obama would be better. Slightly more than four in 10 respondents said the candidates’ stances on the subject of Iraq and terrorism were important. The economy, by comparison, mattered to half.

The survey results were based on telephone interviews with 1,625 adults conducted June 15-19. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

Monday, Sen. McCain decried Mr. Black’s comments. “I cannot imagine why he would say it. It’s not true,” the senator said. “I’ve worked tirelessly since 9/11 to prevent another attack on the United States of America. My record is very clear.”

Yet Sen. McCain trumpets his senatorial experience in dealing with politically volatile regions. In December, on the day of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Sen. McCain expressed his sadness to reporters and discussed his knowledge of the region and his travels there. Sen. McCain added he was the most qualified in the field on national security.

A little over a week later, he won the New Hampshire primary.

Sen. McCain employed the same tactic in Florida. A few days before that contest in January, he accused his closest rival, Mitt Romney, of wanting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Although Mr. Romney denied it, the attack successfully swung the attention from the economy to the war. Sen. McCain narrowly won that primary.

Sen. McCain, the four-term U.S. senator from Arizona and former prisoner of war who spent more than two decades in the Navy, stumps on his patriotism and often mentions his wartime sacrifices. His résumé offers a contrast to that of Sen. Obama, a junior senator from Illinois who has had little experience dealing with national-security issues.

Sen. McCain’s campaign has continued that theme since Sen. Obama has emerged as his general-election opponent. Last week, the campaign seized on remarks Sen. Obama made in a television interview praising law enforcement’s handling of the 1993 World Trade Center attack. The McCain campaign officials convened conference calls with reporters on three mornings to criticize their opponent. Mr. McCain’s foreign-policy director, Randy Scheunemann, accused Sen. Obama of having a “Sept. 10th mind-set.”

The Obama campaign responded with its own conference calls, trying to focus the dialogue on an issue other than national security. They also gathered their surrogates to discuss Mr. Black’s comments, though nearly 18 hours after the news had been reported.

In the end, staffers insisted the discussion be focused on policy and stopped short of calling for Mr. Black’s resignation. Richard Ben-Veniste, a member of the 9/11 Commission, called Mr. Black’s remarks “very disappointing.

Barack Obama raised nearly $5 million Tuesday night at a celebrity-packed fundraiser that was the equivalent of the entertainment industry’s coming-out party for the likely Democratic presidential nominee.

“He’s my candidate, and I think you have to put your money where your mouth is,” actor Don Cheadle said.

Obama’s campaign refused to say how many millions he and the Democratic National Committee raised at the gala, but Democratic officials put the number at close to $5 million. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the numbers publicly.

Campaign officials limited media access to the event at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. No TV cameras or photographers were allowed inside.

Obama, who is counting on Hollywood’s support for Democrats, appealed to the those in the crowd who might have supported his former foe, Hillary Clinton. The long primary, he said, “I know caused some heartburn and some frustration.” He said he and Clinton “were allies then and we’re allies now.”

Also on Tuesday, Obama asked his finance team to help Clinton pay off a debt of at least $10 million from her failed presidential campaign, setting the stage for joint appearances by the two former rivals later in the week.

In a teleconference with his top fundraisers Tuesday afternoon, Obama asked them to do what they could to help Clinton, according to two Democrats familiar with the call.

A campaign spokesman confirmed that Obama had asked them to help the former first lady.”Some of our donors have asked and Barack said if they have the ability to raise or give money to help on debt, we encourage them to do so,” spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Clinton reported a $22.5 million debt at the end of May, more than half of which was a personal loan to her presidential campaign.

Obama has shattered records as he raised more than $287 million through the end of May.

Residents of Unity, N.H. expect more from Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on Friday than just a demonstration of . . . unity. They also want to hear about gas prices.

“Most of our people work out of town, and I think it’s quite an issue,” said Willard Hathaway, chairman of Unity’s Board of Selectmen. Indeed, 83 percent of Unity’s residents drive out of town to work, with an average 27-minute commute, according to state statistics. Granite State residents pay an average price of $4.02 for a gallon of regular unleaded gas, according to the American Automobile Association.

“I guess we’re kind of a hilltop farm country. We have about 600 dwellings in our town. We have small businesses in Unity. We have people commuting in to Lebanon and Keene, and various other towns,” Hathaway said.

The symbolism behind Friday’s appearance in Unity is obvious, considering the town’s name, and the fact that both Clinton and Obama each won the votes of 107 town residents.

“I just couldn’t believe it when first I heard that there was going to be an event with Senator Obama, and then I heard that Senator Clinton was coming as well. It was hard for us to believe it,” Hathaway said.

The town has been told to expect approximately 2,500 people to attend the joint rally on Friday at the Unity Elementary School, according to Hathaway, who serves as the town’s de facto leader in his role as chairman of the Board of Selectmen. He’s lived in Unity for 21 years and cannot recall any visits by a presidential candidate, in a state accustomed to its fair share of political pilgrimages.

Hathaway is a registered Republican, but said he will attend Friday’s event.

“I think it’s a great thing for Unity, and I think it’s just wonderful to see the candidate who very possibly could be President of the United States.”

A presidential seal graphically altered with symbols representing Barack Obama’s campaign of change was just for one-time use and will not be used again, a spokeswoman for the Democrat’s campaign says.

The seal, with its blue background and an eagle in the center clutching arrows and an olive branch, evoked the official presidential version, but had been altered with a new Latin phrase, instead of the original “E pluribus unum,” which means, “Out of many, one.”

Obama’s campaign changed the phrase to “Vero possumus,” which can be roughly translated to his “Yes, we can” slogan. The seal also featured his “O” campaign logo covering the eagle’s body, instead of a shield.

When the altered seal was unveiled last Friday in Chicago, it raised eyebrows and prompted comments about how presidential it looked. The Republican National Committee gleefully ridiculed it as a prop.

Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for Obama’s campaign, said Monday that the altered seal would not be used again. She said it was only intended for that event, in which Obama held a round-table discussion with Democratic governors.

As Barack Obama broadens his outreach to evangelical voters, one of the movement’s biggest names, James Dobson, accuses the likely Democratic presidential nominee of distorting the Bible and pushing a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Constitution.

The criticism, to be aired Tuesday on Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio program, comes shortly after an Obama aide suggested a meeting at the organization’s headquarters here, said Tom Minnery, senior vice president for government and public policy at Focus on the Family.

The conservative Christian group provided The Associated Press with an advance copy of the pre-taped radio segment, which runs 18 minutes and highlights excerpts of a speech Obama gave in June 2006 to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal. Obama mentions Dobson in the speech.

“Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?” Obama said. “Would we go with James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s?” referring to the civil rights leader.

Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy — chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application.”

“Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles,” Obama said.

Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament.

“I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology,” Dobson said.

“… He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.”

Joshua DuBois, director of religious affairs for Obama’s campaign, said in a statement that a full reading of Obama’s speech shows he is committed to reaching out to people of faith and standing up for families. “Obama is proud to have the support of millions of Americans of faith and looks forward to working across religious lines to bring our country together,” DuBois said.

The choice for John McCain’s running mate is such a mystery that few people even know who is helping in that search.

The Republican is leaning on a consummate behind-the-scenes player in Washington — attorney Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr. — for this maximum-discretion, minimal-disclosure assignment. In Culvahouse, a one-time White House counsel to President Reagan, McCain gets someone whose work mostly has been so obscure that he likely isn’t recognized outside Washington’s Beltway.

Culvahouse has been involved in vetting people for positions at all levels of government for three decades, roles he’s gotten partly because of his reputation for under-the-radar maneuvering.

McCain has turned to him in recent weeks as he sorts through a list of some 20 or more would-be No. 2s — not that you’d know it. The Arizona senator, like every nominee-in-waiting, is demanding privacy and trying to keep the search under wraps, including the involvement of the man who goes by A.B.

McCain’s advisers, the few in the know, are under strict orders not to even discuss the search. McCain, at times, has violated his own rule, including mentioning he wanted to consult with Culvahouse and disclosing he had a preliminary names list.

When word leaked that three potentials — former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist — were invited to McCain’s estate Arizona for Memorial Day weekend, aides were furious and insisted it was a social affair.

Democrat Barack Obama, too, has advocated a private process but, so far, it’s been fairly public.

Sen. John McCain added an unusual twist to his emerging energy agenda Monday, promising to award a $300-million prize to the inventor of a next-generation battery that could power electric vehicles. The prize amount is small relative to the billions of dollars the federal government spends on other energy industries. The Bush administration has already pledged $1.2 billion toward research on hydrogen fuel cells, a technology that proponents say is 10 or more years from viability.

But the Arizona senator spoke expansively Monday of the potential of American ingenuity. “We are the country of Edison, Fulton and two brothers named Wright,” he said at a town hall event at Fresno State University’s Satellite Student Union. “Think of all the highest scientific endeavors of our age: the invention of the silicon chip, the creation of the Internet, the mapping of the human genome.”

The presumed Republican presidential nominee also proposed a $5,000 tax break for consumers who buy zero-emission cars, tighter enforcement of federal fuel economy standards and the elimination of tariffs on foreign ethanol.

It is unclear how effective McCain’s proposal would be in reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil. Battery experts said the prize’s effect might be limited.

“In the battery business, you need to spend $100 million just to get warmed up,” said David Vieau, chief executive of battery maker A123 Systems, based in Watertown, Mass.

The company is one of two suppliers developing batteries for the much-anticipated Chevrolet Volt, which is intended to run on battery power for 40 miles before a gasoline generator kicks in. General Motors plans to deliver the car in late 2010.

McCain said he came up with the $300 million by comparing it with a much-ridiculed $233-million earmark for the so-called bridge to nowhere in Alaska and noting that his prize would cost about a dollar for “every man, woman and child in America.”

Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign dismissed the proposal as “tinkering at the edges.”

The two campaigns have been sparring over how to address skyrocketing gasoline prices and climate change.

In mid-April, McCain proposed a summer gas-tax holiday that would suspend federal gasoline and diesel taxes. That proposal was matched by Hillary Rodham Clinton but derided as a gimmick by Obama, who said it would not resolve the country’s reliance on petroleum.

The Illinois senator, who advocates more federal support for renewable energy sources and higher fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, has taken aim at oil speculators, whom he has blamed for the recent run-up in prices.

McCain said last week that he wanted to open up additional areas off the nation’s coasts for oil and gas exploration, and aggressively promote construction of more nuclear power plants.

A recent poll showed public support for increased drilling. But McCain’s proposals drew attacks from environmentalists, who have long criticized nuclear power as an expensive and hazardous substitute for fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas.

Environmental groups have fought for years for more federal support for gas-efficient and gas-free vehicles as a way to reduce oil dependence and greenhouse gas emissions. McCain has occasionally backed those efforts, joining Democrats to co-sponsor legislation in 2002 to raise vehicle fuel efficiency standards. But more often, he has fought such initiatives.

He opposed legislation to require utilities to derive more power from renewable sources such as wind or solar. He helped vote down higher vehicle fuel standards in 2003 and 2005, although he supported an increase that passed last year.

McCain senior policy advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin said Monday that McCain’s support of federal incentives for battery development reflected the urgency of the energy issue.

“It’s a good use of taxpayer money to solve this great danger,” Holtz-Eakin said, although he declined to say how much the senator’s new proposals would cost.

Battery-powered electric vehicles are not a new idea. A century ago, at least half a dozen manufacturers made electric cars, and the first car to break the 60-mph barrier was powered by electricity. But with improvements in the gasoline engine, the technology was shelved.

Electric cars returned in the mid-1990s as car makers produced them to comply with California laws mandating emission-free vehicles.

Those programs were soon abandoned, with General Motors, the most active participant, producing scarcely 2,000 of its EV1 cars. It recalled the last models (which were leased, not sold) and by 2003 had finished destroying them.

Now, with gasoline prices soaring, GM, Toyota, Nissan and Mitsubishi have all pledged to bring battery-powered cars to market in the U.S. between 2010 and 2012.

Only one highway-legal electric car is available for purchase in the U.S.: the $100,000 Tesla roadster. Like the cars proposed by the large auto makers, it relies on lithium ion batteries, the same technology used in cellphones and laptop computers.

Widely regarded as the most promising technology, lithium ion batteries still raise safety concerns, as evidenced by the laptop fires of recent years.

Perhaps a more important issue is cost. Today’s batteries cost as much as $25,000 per car, making them far too expensive for an auto maker to turn a profit.

Reducing that price is considered the battery car’s main challenge.

At Fresno State on Monday, McCain admired a pair of sleek, shiny Tesla sports cars — which can go from zero to 60 in four seconds — on site for the event, calling them “a breakthrough in technology.”

Yet he also spoke in favor of hydrogen fuel cells, which have consistently received more funding than batteries have. “We’ve got to have a thousand flowers blossom,” McCain said.

Electric car advocates reserved judgment on the candidate’s proposal to give a $5,000 tax credit for zero-emission cars, along with smaller credits for cars that have very low carbon emissions. In recent years, the government has given tax credits of as much as $3,150 for buyers of hybrids such as the Toyota Prius, although many of those credits have expired.

The House passed an energy bill in May that includes a tax credit worth up to $5,000 for electric and plug-in hybrids. The measure is pending in the Senate.

Chelsea Sexton, executive director of Plug In America, which advocates electric vehicles, said the McCain proposal is too vague about what sorts of vehicles would receive it. “The devil will be in the details,” she said.

Ed Kjaer, director of electric transportation at Southern California Edison, said any battery proposals should contain measures to ensure that they are made in the U.S.

“This is a national security issue and we don’t want to trade reliance on one foreign fuel for reliance on a foreign energy storage technology,” Kjaer said.

noam.levey@latimes.com

ken.bensinger@latimes.com

Times staff writer Maeve Reston in Fresno contributed to this report.