NASHVILLE, Tenn. — As Barack Obama and John McCain arrive here for their second presidential debate this evening, they bring along baggage at a critical point in the campaign.
Obama’s camp on Monday introduced a new 13-minute Internet “documentary,” formally bringing up for the first time McCain’s role in the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
McCain, meanwhile, tried to paint an aura of mystery — perhaps even fear — around Obama, while his running mate hammered for a third day on the Chicago Democrat’s acquaintance with former 1960s radical turned education professor Bill Ayers.
“For a guy who has already authored two memoirs, he’s not exactly an open book,” McCain said during a New Mexico campaign stop.
The Arizona senator also charged that Obama has repeatedly called him a liar while dodging hard questions.
“I don’t need lessons about telling the truth,” McCain said. “Were I ever to need any improvement in that regard, I probably wouldn’t seek advice from a Chicago politician.”
Crowd of undecided voters
Tonight’s town-hall setting, however, may not be conducive to the hard-hitting volleys dished out by their spokesmen and surrogates multiple times a day.
Rhetoric that is too harsh could very well turn off the audience, or even prompt them to publicly chastise the candidates. Participants in the forum’s audience have been selected because they are supposed to be undecided voters.
And yet, time is running out. There is less than a month before Election Day, and with millions of voters paying attention, the session will be a prime-time platform for the candidates to explain their positions and to try to undermine each other.
Certainly, there is no love lost between Obama and McCain. The atmosphere at the first debate in Oxford, Miss., was frosty — at best — and there seems to be little mutual respect between them.
The increasingly hostile atmosphere comes as conservatives have pressured McCain to be more aggressive in light of slipping poll numbers.
Democrats, by contrast, have continually urged Obama not to let any charge go unanswered, a lesson they learned from attacks leveled against Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee stung by TV ads run by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, told supporters that the criticism of McCain for his role in the Keating Five scandal was justified because there are “so many parallels” to the current financial crisis.
Much earlier in his political career, McCain became embroiled in the scandal when Charles Keating, an Arizona homebuilder and banker who helped bankroll his early campaigns, came calling for help as federal regulators cracked down on his Lincoln Savings and Loan. McCain and a handful of other senators met with regulators, something he later called “poor judgment.” The Lincoln bailout cost taxpayers more than $2 billion.
McCain, who was not prosecuted, contributed $112,00 — the amount raised for him by Keating — to the U.S. Treasury.
Ties to activist questioned
In a Florida appearance, meanwhile, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin called Ayers, a member of the ’60s radical anti-war group the Weather Underground, one of Obama’s “earliest supporters” and charged that the Democratic nominee has been less than forthcoming about their relationship.
McCain’s campaign also appears poised to talk more about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., Obama’s former pastor in Chicago whose incendiary statements from the pulpit and elsewhere prompted the candidate to renounce the remarks and leave the church.
McCain, speaking about the financial crisis in New Mexico, took offense at Obama’s charge that McCain opposed regulation that would have prevented the credit crunch.
“I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough, it will be believed,” McCain said.
The Arizona senator, a veteran of more than two decades in Congress, told his audience that while he is a known quantity, the same cannot be said about Obama, an Illinois senator who is midway through his first term.
“You need to know who you’re putting in the White House — where the candidate came from and what he or she believes,” McCain said. “And you need to know now, before it is time to choose.”
Later, he added: “There are essential things that we don’t know about Sen. Obama or the record he brings to this campaign.”
“Angry candidate”
Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor said McCain is a “truly angry candidate” who is trying to divert attention from the economy and that it was Obama who warned, in 2007, of the subprime mortgage crisis now blamed for the turmoil in the financial industry.
Vietor said McCain has been consistent in calling for less regulation, “proving that he hasn’t learned any lessons from the last banking scandal he was involved in.”
Obama tried to present himself as above the fray, as he emerged briefly from his debate preparations at a resort in Asheville, N.C.
“I cannot imagine anything more important to talk about than the economic crisis, and the notion that we’d want to brush that aside and engage in the usual political shenanigans and scare tactics that have come to characterize too many political campaigns, I think, is not what the American people are looking for,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
