10/05/2008
Falling behind in the polls one month before Election Day, Republican John McCain stepped up efforts to portray Barack Obama as too unacceptable for American voters.
His vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin accused the Democratic nominee of "palling around with terrorists". The onus is on McCain to turn the race around under exceptionally challenging circumstances. With the economic crisis working to Obama's advantage, the Democratic nominee has surged into the lead in both national polls and surveys of key battleground states, including Republican-leaning Virginia, North Carolina and Florida.
Palin's attack on Saturday came after McCain's advisers indicated the Arizona senator's campaign will ramp up his attacks in the coming days with a tougher, more focused message describing "who Obama is", including questioning his character, "liberal" record and "too risky" proposals. Obama's advisers, in turn, say he will argue in the campaign's closing weeks that McCain is unable to articulate an economic vision that is different from President George W. Bush's unpopular policies.
On Saturday, Obama sharply criticized McCain's health care proposals as "radical",saying they could force millions of Americans to struggle to buy medical insurance. Republican officials accused Obama of lying as the campaign took an ever nastier tone. In a speech to thousands of sun-soaked Virginians at a waterside park in Newport News, Obama said he would make health coverage more affordable to most Americans, paying for the subsidies largely by canceling the Bush administration's tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 a year. Obama said he would save money in the health care system by holding drug and insurance companies "accountable for the prices they charge and the harm they cause".
McCain, meanwhile, spent Saturday at a resort hotel in Sedona, Arizona, preparing for his second of three debates with Obama scheduled for Tuesday at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. The upcoming debate is critical because McCain has dwindling chances to regain momentum. McCain suggested to supporters that he would take the gloves off and go after Obama more forcefully in Tuesday night's nationally televised debate. McCain's campaign apparently believes that making Obama, who is seeking to become the first black U.S. president, supremely unacceptable in voters' eyes may be the Republican's best -if not only- shot at winning the presidency. But that risks turning off voters if McCain goes too far.
Palin got in a few early blows Saturday when she told a group of donors at a private airport in Colorado, "Our opponent is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country".
She also said, "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America". Nonetheless, Palin made the comments at three appearances in separate states, in Englewood, Colorado, and later in Carson, California, and Costa Mesa, California. The Obama campaign called Palin's remarks offensive but not surprising in light of news stories detailing the McCain campaign's come-from-behind offensive. "What's clear is that John McCain and Sarah Palin would rather spend their time tearing down Barack Obama than laying out a plan to build up our economy", Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan said in a statement.
Palin's incendiary comment was a reference to Obama's association with a former '60s radical, William Ayers, one of the founders of the Weather Underground. Its members took credit for bombings, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol during the Vietnam War era. Obama, who was a child when the group was active, has denounced Ayers' radical views and activities.
While it is known that Obama and Ayers live in the same Chicago neighborhood, served on a charity board together and had a fleeting political connection, it is a stretch of any reading of the public record to say the pair ever palled around. And it's simply wrong to suggest that they were associated while Ayers was committing terrorist acts. The escalated effort to attack Obama's character dovetails with TV ads by outside groups questioning Obama's ties to Ayers, convicted former Obama fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko and Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Ayers is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He and Obama live in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood and served together on the board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based charity that develops community groups to help the poor. Obama left the board in December 2002. Obama was the first chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school-reform group of which Ayers was a founder. Ayers also held a meet-the-candidate event at his home for Obama when Obama first ran for office in the mid-1990s. The escalated effort to attack Obama's character dovetails with TV ads by outside groups questioning Obama's ties to Ayers, convicted former Obama fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko and Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who made remarks considered to be anti-American in his sermons.
Obama aides said they long planned to focus on economic issues in the final weeks of the race, but the debate over the government's $700 billion financial bailout focused voters on such concerns more than they could have imagined. The push on health care is an opportunity to raise the debate on a pocketbook issue that voters rank near the top of their concerns.
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