McCain questions Obama's link to '60s radical

updated 4:39 p.m. ET Oct. 9, 2008

WAUKESHA, Wis. - Democrat Barack Obama derided his Republican opponent's mortgage buyout plan on Thursday, while John McCain intensified attacks on the first-term Illinois senator's ties to a 1960s radical.

In his strongest criticism of Obama in a campaign that has grown increasingly negative, McCain told a Wisconsin town-hall crowd: "We need to know the full extent of the relationship" with William Ayers, a founder of the violent Vietnam-era Weather Underground.

McCain has increasingly questioned Obama's character as the Republican's poll numbers have slipped amid voter fears that he is not equipped to handle the economic crisis rocking markets and reshaping the U.S. financial sector.

Obama and Ayers, now a college professor, live in the same Chicago neighborhood and have served together on two nonprofit organization boards. Obama, who was a child when Ayers' group committed acts of domestic terrorism, has denounced Ayers' radical views and actions.

McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, first accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists."

Obama, who told ABC television that his opponent was highlighting the Ayers link to "score cheap political points," took on McCain's plan for the U.S. government to buy up sour home mortgages, claiming it would reward bad behavior by lenders and take billions of dollars from struggling taxpayers.

Speaking at the start of a two-day bus tour through swing-state Ohio, Obama charged that McCain's plan would force the government to absorb the full cost of renegotiated mortgages to prevent borrowers from losing their homes — and would let lenders off the hook for questionable practices.

McCain put forward the mortgage rescue idea Tuesday night during the second presidential debate in a bid to recapture momentum in the historic 2008 campaign.

He said the government should spend $300 billion to buy up bad mortgages and re-negotiate them at lower interest rates to prevent foreclosures.

Obama told thousands at a Dayton baseball stadium that McCain's plan "would guarantee that American taxpayers lose by handing over $300 billion to underwrite the kind of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street that got us into this mess."

Video What’s in a (middle) name? A lot, says McCain camp Oct. 9: Hardball host Chris Matthews points out how the McCain campaign is raising suspicion over Obama's character, citing mentions of his middle name and his relationship with Bill Ayers. Morning Joe

Part of Obama's rise in the polls was laid to his ability to significantly outspend McCain in TV advertising, allowing him to better target the swing voters who will decide the election and to take a more positive pitch as he presses to expand his lead.

On Monday alone, Obama spent $3.3 million in TV advertising. At that rate the Democrat will spend more than $90 million on ads through the Nov. 4 election — more than all the money McCain has to spend on his entire fall campaign.

Obama leads in key states and the most recent Gallup Poll daily tracking survey, released Thursday, showed Obama expanding his lead over McCain to 11 percentage points, his largest advantage since the organization began testing voter opinions in their matchup early in the summer.

With polls showing him building a broader lead, Obama has switched to a more positive pitch in his ads. Last week, only 34 percent of his ads attacked McCain directly while virtually all of McCain's ads attacked Obama, according to a study by the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

McCain's ad spending Monday totaled about $900,000 and the Republican National Committee weighed in with about $700,000 worth.

All whopping numbers, but the disparity between Obama and the Republicans is so wide that it has allowed Obama to spend in more states than McCain, to appear more frequently in key markets and to diversify his message by both attacking McCain and promoting his own personal story.

Both candidates have tried to play into voters' worries about the other as the election draws nearer. McCain is perceived as being weak on the economy. Obama continued a line of attack against the veteran senator for saying recently that the fundamentals of the U.S. economy were strong.

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