McCain, Obama mudslinging grips campaign

WASHINGTON (AP) – Mudslinging — initiated over the weekend by Republican John McCain’s campaign — gathered intensity in the presidential race Monday as Democrat Barack Obama resurrected his opponent’s links to a financial scandal two decades ago.

The heightened attacks set a more hostile tone for the race ahead of Tuesday’s presidential debate, the second of three.

Obama, reacting to Republican allegations that he “palled around” with a 1960s radical, fired back with a Web video about McCain’s role in the Keating Five savings and loan debacle early in the Arizona senator’s Senate career. His role in that scandal earned him a rebuke for poor judgment from Senate colleagues.

The Obama campaign was e-mailing a 13-minute Web “documentary” about McCain’s involvement with convicted thrift owner Charles Keating, calling the episode “a window into McCain’s economic past, present and future.”

With a grave financial crisis dragging the 72-year-old Republican lower in the polls with just four weeks remaining until the Nov. 4 election, the McCain campaign had telegraphed its intention to turn the screws on Obama and declared it wanted to turn the page on the economic turmoil.

On Tuesday, Obama told reporters McCain was not paying enough attention to the economic crisis gripping the country, emphasizing that he could not “imagine anything more important to talk about” than Americans’ losing their jobs, health care and homes.

An aide to McCain recently said his campaign would like to shift the presidential race’s focus away from the economy, which has been a better issue for Democrats than Republicans. Since then, McCain’s running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been questioning Obama’s character based on his association with an incendiary pastor and a 1960s radical turned college professor.

McCain continues to discuss economic conditions, but Obama says he needs to offer better and more specific remedies.

The fierce skirmishing broke out after Palin claimed during appearances over the weekend that Obama sees America as so imperfect “that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,” a reference to 1960s-era radical Bill Ayers.

Obama and Ayers do not know each other well although they live in the same Chicago neighborhood, have served on a charity board together and Ayers hosted a meet-the-candidate event when Obama first ran for state office in the mid-1990s.

On Monday, Palin expanded her attack on Obama’s character to include his relationship with an incendiary former pastor as well as his ties to Ayers.

In the process, Palin toned down her description of the Obama-Ayers relationship after her weekend remarks were criticized as exaggerated, but at the same time she embarked on a discussion of Obama’s relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., which Republican presidential candidate John McCain had signaled he did not want to be a part of his campaign.

In an interview with conservative The New York Times columnist William Kristol published Monday, the Alaska governor said there should be more discussion about Wright, Obama’s pastor of 20 years at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. The Democratic candidate denounced Wright and severed ties with the church last spring after videotapes surfaced showing Wright making anti-American and anti-Semitic comments from the pulpit.

Wright had appeared to be off limits for the McCain campaign ever since McCain himself condemned the North Carolina Republican Party in April for an ad that called Obama “too extreme” because Wright was his pastor. McCain asked the party to take down the ad and said, “I’m making it very clear, as I have a couple of times in the past, that there’s no place for that kind of campaigning, and the American people don’t want it.”

When Kristol pressed Palin about Wright, she replied, “I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country.”

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Barack Obama’s allies warn that John McCain’s attacks on the Democrat’s character will lead to the political equivalent of mutual assured destruction — fire your big weapon at your own peril.

Several Obama surrogates said his supporters may start reminding voters of Mr. McCain’s ties to Charles Keating, a convicted savings and loan owner whose actions two decades ago triggered a Senate ethics investigation that involved Mr. McCain as one of “the Keating Five.”

The warnings of massive retaliation came as Mr. McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, took on the role of attacker and said Mr. Obama sees America as so imperfect “that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” She was referring to an early Obama supporter, 1960s radical Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground whose members were blamed for several bombings when Mr. Obama was a child.

Mr. Obama has denounced Mr. Ayers’ radical views and activities. But he’s not above questioning Mr. McCain’s character with loaded words.

On Sunday, Mr. Obama unveiled a TV ad on the economy that paints Mr. McCain was “erratic in a crisis.” Some see that as a reminder of Mr. McCain’s age, 72.

Democrats were well-synchronized Sunday, using the word “erratic” and Mr. Keating’s name in nearly matching sentences across the talk-show circuit.

“This is going to be a month, I think, of character assassination,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, an Obama supporter, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Indeed, McCain adviser Greg Strimple predicted “a very aggressive last 30 days” of the campaign.

Mr. Obama, too, alluded to harsher tactics in a speech Sunday to thousands of people in Asheville, N.C.

Mr. McCain and his aides, Mr. Obama said, “are gambling that he can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance. They’d rather try to tear our campaign down than lift this country up. It’s what you do when you’re out of touch, out of ideas, and running out of time.”

Mr. Obama has denounced Mr. Ayers’ radical views and activities. However, Mr. Ayers hosted a gathering for Mr. Obama in 1995, early in his political career. Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers live in the same Chicago neighborhood and served on charity boards together.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, a Chicago Democrat and Obama supporter, warned against Mr. McCain’s strategy.

“If we are going to go down this road, you know, Barack Obama was 8 years old, somehow responsible for Bill Ayers,” he said. “At 58, John McCain was associating with Charles Keating.”

“If we really want to talk who is associating with who, we will,” Mr. Emanuel said. “The American people will lose in that transaction.”

Early in his Senate career, in the late 1980s, Mr. McCain made what he has called “the worst mistake of my life.” He participated in two meetings with banking regulators on behalf of Mr. Keating, a friend, campaign contributor and S&L financier who was later convicted of securities fraud.

The Senate ethics committee investigated five senators’ relationships with Mr. Keating. It cited Mr. McCain for a lesser role than the others, clearing him of any wrongdoing, but faulting his “poor judgment.”