Obama Heats Up Indiana, North Carolina Primaries

Obama Equates Clinton's Iran Talk With Bush Policies

Obama spent most of his day shuttling from event to event, in an attempt to drum up additional support down the stretch. And while he did, he criticized Clinton's proposed summertime break from the federal gasoline tax as "a phony scheme that nobody thinks is going to work.

"Nobody believes these savings would actually be passed on to consumers. Everybody believes that the oil companies would just jack up their prices to match whatever the reduction was on the gas tax," he said. "It would empty out the highway trust fund."

Obama said Clinton knows better.

"If we take seriously the desire to break our addiction on foreign oil, that we're going to solve this problem long term, as well as giving people short-term relief, and that's what people are looking for. Serious solutions are not the same old stuff that gets you through the next election," he said.

Obama also took aim at Clinton over comments she made on April 22. In an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America," Clinton said America would be able to "obliterate" Iran if the country attacked U.S. ally Israel with nuclear weapons.

"Well, I think there's a difference between talking tough and being tough," Obama said. "And that's been one of my criticisms of George Bush's foreign policy. Talking tough, then invading Iraq, and producing Iran as the biggest strategic winner in our invasion, is not being tough."

Obama also implied that Clinton's stance on Iran was hypocritical.

"Sen. Clinton, who, this last summer, was suggesting that we shouldn't be engaging in hypotheticals, [is] now going around talking about obliterating Iran," he said. "That's not, I think, a clean break from the George Bush policies that have gotten us in trouble."

"I've been very clear with respect to Iran," he continued. "I've said if they attacked Israel that we would consider that an attack on us and we would take forceful action against Iran. I've said that I would not take military actions off the table, but what I've also said, that is, in order for us to curb the bad behavior of Iran, we've got to have direct talks and direct communications so that we are offering both carrots and sticks, and that they understand that they have choices, that there is not an inevitability of military action against Iran, but they are going to have to change their behavior."

Obama called for a more "tempered, measured" approach in order to mobilize allies.

"What we need is consistency and strength, not bluster and saber rattling, and if that's what Sen. Clinton is offering, then she's essentially offering the same thing that George Bush offered for the last seven and a half years," he said. "That has not made us safer, and I do not think that is where the country needs to go."