It's getting ugly
ELECTION '08 | Obama plays Keating card, McCain hits 'Chicago politician'
Inaugurating what promises to be a brutal last month of the presidential campaign, the candidates and their surrogates blasted each other from the swing states and over the airwaves Monday with some of the most vicious accusations to date, instead of talking about the economic meltdown.
(AP)
Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin kicked it off over the weekend, saying Democrat Barack Obama was a "pal" of a domestic terrorist.
Obama responded Monday with a card he has been keeping up his sleeve: A video of Republican John McCain's old pal Charles Keating, a convicted swindler McCain did a favor for which could have cost taxpayers $2 billion.
McCain countered with his most negative speech to date against Obama, calling Obama a "Chicago politician" who hid donors to his campaign, had to return donations from the Middle East, told lies about McCain and refused to answer questions about himself.
"For a guy who's already authored two memoirs, he's not exactly an open book," McCain dead-panned in Albuquerque.
Obama complained McCain was trying to "turn the page" of campaign discussions from the economic crisis to "smear tactics," but Obama pledged to stay focused on the economy.
In Clearwater, Fla., Palin reiterated her contention that former '60s radical Bill Ayers is a "domestic terrorist" and that Obama is close to him. She ridiculed Obama's statement during the primaries that Ayers was just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood."
A story in Saturday's New York Times concluded that Obama, 47, and Ayers, 63, "do not appear to have been close" even though Ayers hosted a coffee for Obama at his house early in Obama's political career and both men served on the boards of two nonprofit groups.
Ayers was a founder of the radical Weather Underground in 1969, an anti-Vietnam War group that set off bombs and was blamed for the deaths of three policemen, a security guard and three of its own members. Federal riot and bombing conspiracy charges against Ayers were dropped, and he later became an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who sits on boards with Mayor Daley, among others.
Ayers' quote that "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough" was published in the New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001. He later said that he opposes all terrorism.
Palin also hit Obama for choosing the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright to be his pastor.
McCain has admitted over the years that he made "a serious error" in not reporting free trips to the Bahamas he took on friend and donor Charles Keating's private jet. He has been contrite about attending two meetings with federal regulators to get them to back off their crackdown on Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan, saying the controversy that sprung from that propelled him to become a champion of campaign finance reform.