Campaigns shift to attacks on eve of debate

By Adam Nagourney

updated 8:12 a.m. ET Oct. 7, 2008

WASHINGTON - Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama entered their general election contest this summer denouncing American politics as trivial and negative, and vowing to run campaigns that would address the concerns of voters during a difficult time.

But Mr. McCain made clear on Monday that he wanted to make the final month of the race a referendum on Mr. Obama’s character, background and leadership — a polite way of saying he intends to attack him on all fronts and create or reinforce doubts about him among as many voters as possible. And Mr. Obama’s campaign signaled that it would respond in kind, setting up an end game dominated by an invocation of events and characters from the lives of both candidates.

The change in tone formed a backdrop for the nationally televised debate between the two candidates on Tuesday night, the second of their three scheduled encounters. It comes when Mr. McCain is under increasing pressure to do something to turn around his campaign, with polls giving Mr. Obama an advantage in the race and in who Americans trust more to deal with the economy, the issue that now trumps all concerns.

Yet in shifting toward a more negative and personal message, the two campaigns risked seeming detached from the economic anxieties of voters at a time when the financial system is teetering. The risk could be especially great for Mr. McCain, who has ceded political ground to Mr. Obama during the financial crisis and has taken the more combative stance in recent days. A lacerating speech he gave Monday — “Who is the real Barack Obama?” Mr. McCain asked — was shown on cable television juxtaposed with images of another horrible day on Wall Street.

“Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there’s always a back story with Senator Obama,” Mr. McCain said, speaking in Albuquerque. “My opponent’s touchiness every time he is questioned about his record should make us only more concerned.”

During the day, Mr. McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin , raised questions about Mr. Obama’s “truthfulness and judgment.” Mr. McCain’s supporters sought to focus attention on Mr. Obama’s associations with his former pastor and a onetime 1960s radical. The Republican National Committee called for an investigation into questionable campaign contributions to Mr. Obama.

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Mr. Obama’s campaign responded by releasing a slick, 13-minute video describing Mr. McCain’s connections with the Keating Five savings and loan scandal that tarnished Mr. McCain during the 1980s, a video that Mr. Obama’s advisers said had been held in wait in case this moment arrived. Mr. Obama’s aides portrayed Mr. McCain as angry and impetuous. Mr. Obama scolded his opponent as trying to turn attention away from the economy.

“I cannot imagine anything more important to talk about than the economic crisis,” Mr. Obama said, campaigning in Asheville, N.C. “And the notion that we’d want to brush that aside and engage in the usual political shenanigans and scare tactics that have come to characterize too many political campaigns, I think is not what the American people are looking for.”

Mr. McCain’s aides suggested the attacks that he and his running mate had unleashed were intended to set the table for their debate in Nashville, one of the few high-profile moments Mr. McCain has left to reach voters across the country and present a disqualifying version of Mr. Obama. Ms. Palin told a crowd in Florida that she had advised Mr. McCain to “take the gloves off” on Tuesday night.

Video   Palin: Obama got started with help of terrorist Oct. 6: Speaking in Florida, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin hammers Barack Obama over his association with William Ayers. MSNBC

Still, it may not be easy: This debate will be in a town-hall setting and the candidates will be taking questions from voters, a format that historically has made it difficult to mount the kind of attacks Mr. McCain is looking to make.

Ms. Palin again invoked Mr. Obama’s sporadic encounters with William Ayers, a founder of a 1960s radical group — amplifying a message the McCain campaign was pushing in a steady stream of e-mail messages to reporters and supporters — and suggested again that Mr. Obama was “not one of us.”

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