Anti-Obama anger erupts at McCain events

Secret Service investigates
The Secret Service confirmed Friday that it had investigated an episode reported in The Washington Post in which someone in Palin's crowd in Clearwater, Fla., shouted "kill him," on Monday, meaning Obama. There was "no indication that there was anything directed at Obama," Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said. "We looked into it because we always operate in an atmosphere of caution."

Fitting with McCain's theme that people don't know enough about Obama, his co-chairman Frank Keating broached a subject Thursday that got one of Hillary Rodham Clinton's advisers removed from her inner circle during her Democratic primary campaign.

Keating described Obama as a "guy of the street" who should be more candid about his drug use as a young man. Obama wrote about his teenage experimentation with drugs and alcohol in his memoirs.

The McCain campaign began running a new television ad criticizing Obama for his relationship with Ayers, a founder of the violent Weather Underground group during the Vietnam War era. Obama and Ayers are neighbors in Chicago, and the two once served together on a charity board. Ayers held a house party for Obama when he was launching his career in Chicago politics, but the two are not close friends.

"When convenient, he worked with terrorist Bill Ayers," the ad says. "When discovered, he lied."

In two events this week, warm-up speakers at GOP rallies have used Obama's middle name, Hussein, to seed doubts about the Democrat, a tactic meant to draw attention to the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim, as well as to belittle him. "On Nov. 4, let's leave Barack Hussein Obama wondering what happened," a sheriff told Palin's Florida rally.

McCain once stepped forward directly to denounce that tactic. This week, his campaign merely issued a lukewarm criticism that tried to score a political point in the same breath: "We do not condone this inappropriate rhetoric which distracts from the real questions of judgment, character and experience that voters will base their decisions on this November."

Some of the frustration at McCain's rallies is from people who want the candidate to go harder after Obama. In Waukesha, when a voter begged McCain to take a more combative tone toward Obama, McCain instead talked about the financial crisis.

"Could I just say very quickly, yes, I'll do that," McCain said. "But I also, my friends, want to address the greatest financial challenge of our lifetime with a positive plan for action."

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