COLUMBUS, Nov 1: Muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger called on Barack Obama to beef up his policies and his body at a high-voltage campaign rally for Republican John McCain on Friday.

Schwarzenegger, the former Hollywood action hero who is now the Republican Governor of California, pumped up a crowd of several thousand at a McCain campaign event in Ohio by ridiculing Obama’s policies and his slender physique.

The Austrian-born former Mr Universe has hosted a bodybuilding tournament in Columbus for several years, and opened his address by inviting Obama to participate in the his next event.

“Every year in March I come here to organise the Arnold Classic which is all about building the body and pumping,” said Schwarzenegger.

“That’s why I want to invite Senator Obama because he needs to do something about those skinny legs. I’m going to make him do some squats.

“And then we’re going to make him do some biceps curls to beef up those scrawny little arms. But if he could only do something about putting some meat on his ideas. Senator McCain on the other hand is built like a rock. His character and his views are solid.” McCain and Schwarzenegger rolled into the Nationwide Arena Hockey Stadium together on the Republican candidate’s “Straight Talk Express”, the campaign bus that has ferried him on a two-day blitz of this battleground state.

While McCain’s stump speech received rapturous applause, it was Schwarzenegger who raised the roof.The star of the “Terminator” blockbusters unloaded a searing attack on Obama’s economic policies while painting former Vietnam War prisoner and Navy pilot McCain as a “real-life American hero”. —AFP