Campaigns shift to attacks on eve of debate

At a rally in Estero, Fla., for Ms. Palin, one of the introductory speakers, Mike Scott, the sheriff of Lee County, referred to the Democratic candidate as Mr. Obama as “Barack Hussein Obama.”

In an interview with William Kristol on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times on Monday, Ms. Palin suggested that it would be fair for Mr. McCain to invoke Mr. Obama’s relationship to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. , given the incendiary nature of Mr. Wright’s views — even though Mr. McCain has condemned some previous attacks on Mr. Obama linking him to Mr. Wright.

Strategists from both parties suggested that this kind of turn in tone was inevitable.

“There are not a lot of things we can count on these days,” said Mark McKinnon, a former adviser to Mr. McCain who stepped aside earlier this year because, he told associates, he did not want to be part of a campaign tearing down Mr. Obama. “But, the sun will rise. The sun will set. And presidential campaigns will go negative.”

Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant known as an advocate for tough campaigns, said: “At the end of the day, campaigns are campaigns. In the last five days, it always comes down to a knife fight in a telephone booth.”

But several strategists, including Republicans, questioned whether this tactic would be successful for Mr. McCain, given the lateness of the date and the economic crisis washing over the country.

“This is not a normal campaign. Normal personal or character-based attacks are not going to work particularly well,” said Stuart Stevens, a Republican consultant who worked for President Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004. “If your house is on fire, all you care about is who can put the fire out the best.”

Howard Wolfson , a senior aide to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton during her tough fight against Mr. Obama in the Democratic primaries, had long warned that Mr. Obama’s history with Mr. Ayers would provide fodder to Republicans. But Mr. Wolfson said Monday that he did not think it would be effective in this environment, coming so late and at a time of such anxiety about the economy.

“It might have made a difference had the financial underpinning of the country not just collapsed,” he said. “You’re not going to change the subject from the economy.”

Ms. Palin has several times cited a New York Times article published Saturday in raising Mr. Obama’s association with Mr. Ayers, but she has sidestepped its conclusion that the two men did not appear to be close and that Mr. Obama had never expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers.

Mr. Obama left it to his surrogates to raise the Keating bank scandal, as he talked about the economy and argued that Mr. McCain was running away from the subject; his aides suggested this would be the tack he would take at the debate.

More from NYTimes.com One Town’s Rare Ray of Hope: New Auto Plant An Effort to Save a City by Shrinking It Lawmaker Is Said to Have Agreed to Aid Lobbyists Pressure Grows to Investigate Interrogations Crisis or Not, Russia Will Build a Bridge in the East External links

Yet if Democrats were once concerned — and they were — that Mr. Obama or his campaign did not have the stomach to push back in this kind of fight, the aggressive response by the campaign and the candidate might well have assuaged it. The language out of the Obama campaign — in advertisements, statements and remarks by surrogates — was filled with language intended to underline Mr. McCain as hotheaded.

“Look, I’m not sitting here with my feet up,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior political adviser. “I think we have to fight. This is going to be a struggle every day.”

Mr. McCain’s chief strategist, Steve Schmidt , did not respond to an e-mail message requesting comment.

Julie Bosman, Patrick Healy and Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.

This article, "Campaigns shift to attack mode on eve of debate," first appeared in The New York Times.

MORE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times Section Front

For thrillers, Glenn Beck is new Oprah Analysis: Victories rekindle GOP’s hope The Obamas’ marriage is an ongoing negotiation Bailout fuels era of Wall Street wealth ACORN’s woes strain ties to Dems Biden no longer a lone voice on Afghanistan The New York Times Section Front