McCain, Obama mudslinging grips campaign

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By Charles Babington and Steven R. Hurst ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) – Mudslinging -- initiated over the weekend by Republican John McCain's campaign -- gathered intensity in the presidential race Monday as Democrat Barack Obama resurrected his opponent's links to a financial scandal two decades ago.

The heightened attacks set a more hostile tone for the race ahead of Tuesday's presidential debate, the second of three.

Obama, reacting to Republican allegations that he "palled around" with a 1960s radical, fired back with a Web video about McCain's role in the Keating Five savings and loan debacle early in the Arizona senator's Senate career. His role in that scandal earned him a rebuke for poor judgment from Senate colleagues.

The Obama campaign was e-mailing a 13-minute Web "documentary" about McCain's involvement with convicted thrift owner Charles Keating, calling the episode "a window into McCain's economic past, present and future."

With a grave financial crisis dragging the 72-year-old Republican lower in the polls with just four weeks remaining until the Nov. 4 election, the McCain campaign had telegraphed its intention to turn the screws on Obama and declared it wanted to turn the page on the economic turmoil.

On Tuesday, Obama told reporters McCain was not paying enough attention to the economic crisis gripping the country, emphasizing that he could not "imagine anything more important to talk about" than Americans' losing their jobs, health care and homes.

An aide to McCain recently said his campaign would like to shift the presidential race's focus away from the economy, which has been a better issue for Democrats than Republicans. Since then, McCain's running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been questioning Obama's character based on his association with an incendiary pastor and a 1960s radical turned college professor.

McCain continues to discuss economic conditions, but Obama says he needs to offer better and more specific remedies.

The fierce skirmishing broke out after Palin claimed during appearances over the weekend that Obama sees America as so imperfect "that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," a reference to 1960s-era radical Bill Ayers.

Obama and Ayers do not know each other well although they live in the same Chicago neighborhood, have served on a charity board together and Ayers hosted a meet-the-candidate event when Obama first ran for state office in the mid-1990s.