Watch video of Palin
attack on Obama
FACED with the threat of a decisive victory for Barack Obama, the Democratic
presidential candidate, his Republican rival John McCain is preparing to
take the gloves off and “get tough” in the closing weeks of an increasingly
aggressive election campaign.
The McCain camp has already launched a series of negative advertisements
attacking Obama’s character and associates. They are being shown in
battleground states that are tilting towards the Democratic senator.
In an unusual move at this late stage, McCain is spending the weekend at home
in Arizona reassessing tactics and preparing for his second head-to-head
debate with Obama on Tuesday in Nashville, Tennessee. The audience rather
than a moderator will ask the questions. “McCain is fantastic at town
halls,” a McCain aide claimed. “We normally go through an
expectations-lowering game before debates, but he excels at this format.”
The McCain campaign is acutely aware that it is running out of “game-changing”
scenarios, while Obama has strengthened his hand in at least eight
battleground states, including the former Republican strongholds of Indiana,
Virginia and North Carolina.
There are differences of opinion within the campaign about how aggressive
McCain should be. The Arizona senator, 72, already has a reputation for
irascibility. However, a supporter asked him last week when he would get
tough with his opponent. “How about Tuesday night?” he responded.
If Obama emerges the winner of the television debate, McCain’s strategy will
harden. Campaign officials are closely monitoring Obama’s long-term Chicago
donor, Antoin “Tony” Rezko, the Syrian-born slum landlord and
influence-peddler who is due to be sentenced on October 28, a week before
polling day. He faces up to 20 years in prison for fraud, attempted bribery
and money-laundering.
Rezko helped Obama to buy his $1.6m Chicago home in 2005 by purchasing an area
of garden next door. He has been discreetly visiting Chicago’s courthouse
recently, prompting speculation that he has begun dishing the dirt about
political corruption in the “windy city” in return for a more lenient
sentence.
“There is no doubt that Rezko is a legitimate election issue,” said a McCain
aide. “They have a 20-year relationship together. There are rumours that
Rezko has cut a deal with prosecutors.”
The official noted that the FBI last week raided the Chicago home of Larry
Walsh, a poker-playing friend and former colleague of Obama in the Illinois
state senate, linking the Democrat further to alleged corruption in his home
town.
The danger is that Rezko may be co-operating so much that federal prosecutors
ask for a delay in sentencing beyond November 4, the worst possible outcome
for McCain at a time when Obama, 47, holds a commanding lead of nearly six
points in the polls. He has begun to strike the previously elusive 50% mark
after the Wall Street crisis torpedoed the credibility of McCain and the
Republicans on economic policy.
An Obama adviser confidently predicted that the Democrat would win the
election by 10 points. “McCain is totally collapsing in the battleground
states. The economic crisis has changed the playing field,” he said. He
added that McCain had barely passed 45% throughout the election campaign and
thought it was likely to be his final tally on November 4.
Obama’s huge volunteer army has signed up many more new voters in key states
than McCain’s hand-to-mouth organisation. The Illinois senator yesterday
dispatched Bruce Springsteen, the rock star, and Jay-Z, the rapper, to
concerts in Michigan and Philadelphia in an attempt to register thousands
more before the deadline expires tomorrow.
Some McCain advisers believe it is better for outside groups to hit back with
personal attacks on other “friends” of Obama, such as his pastor, the Rev
Jeremiah Wright. But Sarah Palin, McCain’s running mate, went straight for
the jugular yesterday with an attack on Obama for “palling around with
terrorists”, a reference to his links to Bill Ayers, one of the founders of
the Weather Underground which took responsibility for explosions at the
Pentagon and Capitol during the Vietnam war.
The New York Times yesterday chronicled Obama’s relationship with Ayers and
concluded that the Democrat had “played down his contacts” with him, even if
the two did not “appear to have been close”. In 1995 Obama chaired the
Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a left-wing project to raise school performance
co-founded by Ayers, which distributed $50m funds to little effect. Obama
later served on the board of the Woods Fund, an anti-poverty charity, with
Ayers.
Independent groups are stepping up their attacks. The conservative Judicial
Confirmation Network has started to run a $1m advertising campaign in
bellwether states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, linking Obama to Rezko,
Wright and Ayers — “a man who helped to bomb the Pentagon and said he didn’t
do enough”.
Freedom’s Defense Fund, another independent group, has been running
advertisements in Michigan which begin, “Meet Tony Rezko. One of Obama’s top
donors”. They go on to list Rezko’s convictions before concluding, “You
should know who Obama’s friends are”.
Grover Norquist, the influential conservative tax lobbyist, said there were
more well funded attack advertisements on the way. “Obama comes from the
most corrupt political machine in the United States,” Norquist said. “The
McCain campaign should be saying, ‘Let’s take the guy’s head off. He is a
crook’.”
Norquist believes McCain will eventually side with those advocating more
negative attacks. “At the end of the day he’ll say, ‘Guys, I want to be
president. One thing I believe about John McCain is that he really, really,
really wants to be president.”
The resurrection of Palin, 44, in her first and only vice-presidential debate
with Joe Biden, her Democratic opponent, has lifted spirits inside the
McCain campaign. Advice to “let Palin be Palin” has worked, they believe.
Insiders say she is no longer as “tightly wound” as she was when conducting
disastrous television interviews with Katie Couric, the CBS newscaster.
Three viewers’ polls from Fox News, CBS and CNN claimed that the veteran Biden
had won the debate. But the McCain camp believes that Palin’s sunny, folksy
persona shone through and that they have a chance to turn perceptions around
after a record-breaking 70m viewers tuned in.
The spiked-heeled, moose-hunting mother of five is now back in blistering
vice-presidential attack mode. In an interview on Fox News she accused Obama
of being unfit for the job of commander-in-chief.
“Some of his comments about Afghanistan and what we are doing there supposedly
— just air raiding villages and killing civilians. That’s reckless,” Palin
said.
The question is whether the re-emergence of Palin can alter the dynamics of
the race. In Virginia, where the Republicans traditionally do well, McCain
is trailing Obama by an average of two points in the polls.
Watching the vice-presidential debate in a bar in Manassas, a blue-collar
town, voters said they liked Palin’s style — “she’s got guts”, one said —
but thought her performance was largely irrelevant to the fate of the
ticket.
Darlene Davis, 49, a bookkeeper for local schools, who is supporting McCain,
said: “I liked her better at first. I’m a little on the fence now. I’m
worried about her lack of experience. Can she handle the job?”
The picture was the same in North Carolina, a former safe Republican state
where Obama went into the lead by half a point last week. Kay Hart, 35, a
stay-at-home mother from Asheville, said: “I voted for President Bush but
that is almost embarrassing now. The bail-out is the end. I can’t understand
how we got to this point . . . I like Sarah Palin, she’s fun, but I worry
that it would all end up more of the same.”
The McCain campaign last week drained staff and resources from Michigan —
which had been one of their top Democratic targets — to shore up a faltering
operation in former Republican bastions such as Indiana, where McCain is
leading Obama by only 47%-45%.
Murray Clark, chairman of the Indiana Republican party, said that Obama’s
“troubling relationships” should be thoroughly aired: “They do have an
impact on mainstream voters. You call it going negative . . . but I think
it’s helpful.”
McCain should go for the jugular in debate, according to David Freddoso,
author of The Case Against Obama: “When Obama talks about lack of oversight
of Wall Street, McCain should say, ‘What about Tony Rezko? You helped him to
make millions and let his houses degenerate into slums’.”
Sir Nigel Sheinwald, the British ambassador to Washington, provided fresh
ammunition by describing Obama as “decidedly liberal” and “maybe aloof,
insensitive” in a private report to Downing Street.
It would be more useful, however, a McCain source observed dryly, if Americans
actually cared what the British ambassador thought.
Additional reporting: Holly Watt
