STOCKTON, CA — So who is making age an issue now? While his campaign took great offense to Senator Obama’s subtle jab at the GOPers age a couple weeks ago, Sen. McCain decided to instead make Obama’s youth a campaign issue Thursday.

“I admire and respect Senator Obama. For a young man with very little experience, he’s done very well. So I appreciate-with his very, very great lack of experience and knowledge of the issues, he’s been very successful,” McCain said to laughter from the more than 500 supporters gathered at an airport hangar rally Thursday afternoon. “So, don’t get me wrong-I admire and respect Senator Obama, but he does not have the knowledge, background or judgment to lead this nation in these difficult and challenging times and I do. And I can keep this nation prosperous and secure.”

The dig at Obama, 46, echoes a similar line President Reagan used during a 1984 presidential debate when he defered a question about his age by reversing the issue on his younger opponent, Walter Mondale.

“I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” Reagan joked. “If it was not for the elders correcting the mistakes of the young, there would be no state.”

McCain, who turns 72 in August, will be the oldest president ever elected to a first term in office. When Obama said during a CNN interview earlier this month that McCain was “losing his bearings,” the Republican’s senior adviser Mark Salter issued a strong statement condemning the Democrat.

“He used the words ‘losing his bearings’ intentionally, a not particularly clever way of raising John McCain’s age as an issue. This is typical of the Obama style of campaigning,” Salter wrote in a memo. “We have all become familiar with Senator Obama’s new brand of politics. First, you demand civility from your opponent, then you attack him, distort his record and send out surrogates to question his integrity. It is called hypocrisy, and it is the oldest kind of politics there is.”