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AFP
Miami
Tim Kaine made a big splash on Saturday in his first appearance as Hillary Clinton's running mate for the White House, savaging Donald Trump's foreign policy ideas as dangerous and wowing a Miami crowd with fluent Spanish.
Kaine, a 58-year-old senator from the battleground state of Virginia, won many a cheer and laugh and frequent applause as he addressed a campaign rally one day after being tapped for the Democratic ticket.
Clinton beamed as she sat behind Kaine during his rousing and well-delivered speech, after introducing the political veteran as the antithesis of the Republican ticket of Trump and Mike Pence.
If Trump is often criticized as an egotistical blowhard, Kaine came across as an agile, knowledgeable and self-deprecating speaker.
Kaine slammed recent comments by Trump to the effect that if Russia were to attack a Baltic nation, he as president would come to their aid only after assessing whether they"have fulfilled their obligations to us."
"Folks, that's an open invitation to Vladimir Putin to roll on in,"said Kaine, an experienced foreign policy hand who serves on both the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees -- and whose son is about to deploy with the US military to Europe.
He dazzled the crowd right off the bat by greeting them in very good Spanish --"bienvenidos a todos,"or welcome to all -- saying that his values were"fe, familia y trabajo."That means faith, family and work.
Both he and Clinton drove home what is emerging as a key campaign message: that Trump is a deeply divisive figure with despotic tendencies -- and that Clinton is his polar opposite.
"When someone says I alone can fix it, that should set off alarm bells,"Clinton said."That is not a democracy."
"Do you want a trash talking president or bridge building president?"Kaine asked at one point."Hillary knows that we're stronger together."
The former mayor and governor praised Clinton as sharing his values and said, again in Spanish,"we will be soul mates in the big battle to come."
But even as the party basked in this seeming love fest, a whiff of scandal likely to rattle party unity emerged.
A cache of leaked emails from Democratic party leaders'accounts includes at least two messages suggesting an insider effort to hobble Bernie Sanders'upstart campaign -- including by seeking to present him as an atheist to undermine him in highly-religious states.
Trump pounced on the leaks as he tries to scoop up disaffected voters who feel Sanders -- a self-described democratic socialist from Vermont initially dismissed as a fringe candidate -- was denied a fair shot at the nomination.
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