McCain again raises Obama's ties with 1970s radical
By Matt Spetalnick 2 hours, 7 minutes ago
WAUKESHA, Wisconsin (Reuters) - Down in opinion polls, Republican presidential nominee John McCain pressed his effort to raise doubts about Barack Obama's character on Thursday with a fresh attack on his Democratic rival's contacts with a former left-wing radical who became a college professor.
On a day the stock market took another precipitous drop, the two candidates also bickered over how to resurrect the economy, with Obama taking aim at a McCain mortgage bailout plan that he said would reward banks responsible for the U.S. housing crisis.
Obama is riding an advantage in national opinion polls and in several states that hold the key to the election. He has built a 4-point lead over McCain in Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Thursday.
Trying to turn the tide with less than three weeks to go to the November 4 vote, McCain went on the attack at a joint rally with his vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, as well as in a new Web video ad.
His goal was to tie Obama to William Ayers, a founding member of the Weather Underground, a radical left anti-Vietnam War group that bombed the U.S. Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972. Ayers spent 10 years as a fugitive and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, spent time on the FBI's Most Wanted list.
Obama, has called Ayers, now a college education professor, "a guy in my neighborhood" and said he and Ayers are not close. He told ABC News on Wednesday that McCain is trying to score "cheap political points" by bringing up Ayers.
Ayers in the mid-1990s hosted a meeting at his house to introduce Obama to neighbors during Obama's first run for a seat in the Illinois Senate. They also served on a nonprofit anti-poverty board together.
"We don't care about an old washed-up terrorist and his wife..." McCain said. "That's not the point here. The point is Sen. Obama said he was just a guy in the neighborhood. We know that's not true. We need to know the full extent of the relationship because of whether Sen. Obama is telling the truth to the American people or not."
