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Character attacks emerge in McCain-Obama race
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-07 11:12 Obama, she said, was "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." Ayers helped found the violent Weather Underground group, whose members were blamed for several bombings when Obama was 8. Obama has denounced Ayers' radical views and activities. The two men live near each other in Chicago, and once worked on the same charity board. Ayers hosted a small, meet-the-candidate event for Obama in 1995, at the start of his political career, but multiple news accounts have said they are not close. The campaign called Palin's remarks outrageous and grossly exaggerated.
As a senator, McCain participated in two meetings with banking regulators on Keating's behalf. He became one of the "Keating Five" senators investigated by the Senate ethics committee. The panel cited McCain for a lesser role than others, but criticized his "poor judgment." McCain has since called his involvement with Keating "the worst mistake of my life." McCain and Obama say they are dredging up Ayers and Keating because the episodes shed light on each other's current judgment -- and because the other campaign is on the attack, though a McCain aide said the GOP campaign wanted to change the subject from the failing economy. A few months ago, both candidates promised something better. Obama, extolling a new brand of politics, told an Iowa audience in January: "We can't afford the same old partisan food fight. We can't afford a politics that's all about tearing opponents down instead of lifting the country up." McCain, shaken by a vicious whisper campaign in South Carolina that helped George W. Bush beat him there during the 2000 Republican primaries, has often vowed to be a straight-shooting candidate who puts honor ahead of winning. When Republicans attacked fellow retired Navy officer Kerry in the 2004 "Swiftboat" episode, McCain called the ads "dishonest and dishonorable." Earlier in this campaign when the North Carolina Republican Party said Obama's relationship with Rev. Wright made him "too extreme," McCain asked it to stop and said: "There's no place for that kind of campaigning, and the American people don't want it." The new tone may depress many, but a top independent pollster in the battleground state of Pennsylvania said it's unlikely to change many minds. "The economy is so dominant and the change focus so great, I just don't think voters are going to buy into it," said Terry Madonna, a political scientist at Franklin and Marshall College. |
