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ASHEVILLE, North Carolina: Barack Obama hammered
Republican White House rival John McCain for wanting to “turn the
page” on the US economic crisis and engage in low-blow personal
attacks a month from election day.
The Democrat hit back on Monday
with a new television spot after McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin
accused Obama of consorting with “terrorists,” in a blistering
attack on his ties to former anti-Vietnam War militant William
Ayers.
“Senator McCain and his
operatives are gambling that he can distract you with smears rather
than talk to you about substance,” Obama told a giant crowd here,
said by police to number at least 28,000 people.
“They’d rather tear our
campaign down than lift this country up. That’s what you do when
you’re out of touch, out of ideas, and running out of time,” the
Illinois senator said, ahead of the second presidential debate
Tuesday, or Wednesday in Manila. (See related front-page story.)
The new Obama ad called McCain
“erratic” and “out of touch.” It featured footage of a
shuttered factory, a panicked financial trading floor and a family
struggling to make ends meet.
It juxtaposed those images with
remarks from top McCain adviser Greg Strimple, who said the campaign
was “looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis”
and instead attack Obama’s “aggressively liberal record.”
“We’re facing the worst
economic crisis since the Great Depression, and John McCain wants us
to ‘turn the page’ on talking about the economy?” Obama said,
drawing derisive jeers from the North Carolina crowd.
McCain was preparing for
Tuesday’s debate near his ranch in Arizona, and needs a
game-changing performance to turn the tide in the buildup to the
November 4 vote.
Home stretch
On the home stretch of the
campaign, Obama said he would hammer away at the issues as crisis
sweeps through Wall Street and Main Street—and the polls are
breaking his way both nationally and in battleground states.
Sunday’s national tracking poll
by Gallup gave Obama 50-percent support, compared to 43 percent for
McCain.
But after Congress approved a
$700-billion financial bailout plan last week, the McCain campaign
now hopes to portray Obama as unfit to lead owing to his comparative
inexperience and liberal associates.
Bad company
On Sunday, Alaska Governor Palin
raised the Ayers connection after a New York Times report on the
Chicago professor of education and former member of a group of 1960s
radicals called the Weathermen.
The group carried out a series of
bombings on the Pentagon and other government buildings. The New
York Times report backed up Obama’s assertions that he is only
loosely connected to Ayers in Chicago’s milieu of politics and
charity.
But Palin accused the Illinois
senator of “palling around with terrorists” and said the
Democrat was therefore “not a man who sees America as you and I
do, as the greatest force for good in the world.”
Obama aides called the one-term
governor’s remarks “shameless,” and the candidate said McCain
was reprising the kind of “Swift Boat” smears that helped to
sink 2004 nominee John Kerry’s campaign against President George
W. Bush.
Ayers hosted a gathering at his
home when Obama was starting out in state politics back in 1995, and
they worked through a charity to reform Chicago schools. But aides
said the pair had not met in at least three years.
However, McCain spokesman Tucker
Bounds insisted that Ayers formed part of a network of Chicago
backers including convicted fraudster Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a
property tycoon who used to be a top fundraiser for Obama.
“The last four weeks of this
election will be about whether the American people are willing to
turn our economy and national security over to Barack Obama, a man
with little record, questionable judgment and ties to radical
figures like unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers,” he
said.
Democrat counters
Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois,
one of the Democratic Party’s fiercest attack dogs, said McCain
was playing with fire.
“At 58, John McCain was
associating with Charles Keating,” he told CNN, referring to a
businessman who was jailed in the massive savings and loan crisis of
the 1980s, the worst scandal of McCain’s career.
“I’m
not in the business of giving political advice to John McCain. But I
would watch when you’re going to deal with associations,”
Emanuel warned.
--AFP
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