McCain camp turns to Clinton’s strategy

Republican presidential nominee John McCain is using Hillary Clinton’s tactics to try to catch his Democratic rival.

The McCain camp has sharpened its attacks on Barack Obama as it tries to draw more attention to some of Obama’s “unsavory” past associations and replicate some of the success Clinton enjoyed toward the end of the Democratic nomination battle.

{mosads}Heading into the second presidential debate Tuesday night, McCain and his campaign have pushed the issue of Obama’s relationship with 1960s domestic terrorist William Ayers. At least one campaign source has noted that after the Ayers issue came up earlier this spring, Clinton went on to win several primaries despite the mathematical impossibility she faced in trying to wrest the nomination from Obama.

Tucker Bounds, a McCain spokesman, said Monday that the Ayers issue could very well surface during Tuesday night’s town hall-style debate in Nashville, Tenn. And he noted that one of the reasons Clinton had success late in the nomination battle was because she pursued the question of judgment and Obama’s past association with Ayers.

“I would imagine that’s something that could come up,” Bounds said. He added that late-breaking undecided voters went with the New York senator after Obama had all but wrapped up the Democratic nomination because she, like McCain, exhibited “superior experience and judgment on the issues, and those voters had doubts about the credibility of Barack Obama.”

The Ayers issue was thrust to the forefront of the Democratic primary process at an April debate in Philadelphia, an opening created by moderator George Stephanopoulos and seized upon by Clinton. After that debate, which some Obama supporters complained was biased against the Illinois senator, Clinton went on to several primary wins, including in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

The Obama campaign has hustled to downplay or dispute the characterization of Obama and Ayers as “friendly,” and on Monday Obama’s campaign fired back by raising McCain’s involvement in the 1980s Keating Five scandal.

But since mid-summer, the consensus among analysts has been that the race is largely a referendum on Obama, and for McCain to win he needed to seed and water doubts in voters’ minds about Obama as an unknown quantity.

In remarks on Monday, McCain pushed that argument more aggressively than he has thus far, asking supporters at a campaign stop: “Who is the real Barack Obama?” His running mate, Sarah Palin, has also pushed the Obama-Ayers connection at various campaign events.

With just 29 days left in the race, polls show that Obama is surging both nationally and in key states, a lead that has grown substantially as the news of the economic crisis has moved into its third week. All that has led the Obama campaign to accuse McCain of “desperation.”

“John McCain is running out of time for a game-changing event,” Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro said Monday. “In its latest sign of desperation, his campaign admitted today that if they ‘keep talking about the economic crisis, they’re going to lose.’ Tuesday’s debate provides an interesting opportunity for John McCain — does he further explain his erratic response to the economic crisis and attempt to rebuild the trust he lost among voters on the economy? Or does he follow his campaign’s ‘turn the page’ strategy to ignore the economy and launch 90 minutes of character attacks against Barack Obama? There’s no question that McCain does extremely well in town hall settings. It’s been his favorite format throughout his career — so we expect him to do well.”

The “turn the page” quotation on the economy was used by McCain senior strategist Greg Strimple on a conference call with reporters last week when he noted that the campaign was looking to turn the subject back to Obama and his record. The Obama campaign has seized on that and other comments to portray McCain as “out of touch” on the ongoing financial crisis.

“The question is, which John McCain shows up?” Shapiro said. “While McCain may want to ‘turn the page,’ millions of Americans tuning into this debate want to hear what John McCain will do to fix the economy and get America working again. So far he has utterly failed to convince working people that he’ll be on their side.

But Bounds insisted Monday that McCain is simply pursuing a two-pronged strategy, noting that the bulk of both McCain’s and Palin’s remarks are devoted to the economy, but the campaign thinks it is perfectly legitimate to talk about the Republican ticket’s plans for the economy while raising doubts about Obama’s judgment.

“To use a phrase coined by the Obama campaign, we are going to walk and chew gum at the same time,” Bounds said.

One former Clinton official acknowledged the success Clinton enjoyed in the closing weeks of the Democratic nomination battle, but he said he was skeptical that McCain’s plan to push the Ayers issue at this stage in the calendar will be effective.

“I’m not sure that it’s going to be effective in the last three or four weeks,” the former official said, adding that McCain’s change in message at this stage of the race calls into question the “health” of his candidacy and points to a “schizophrenic” campaign organization.

Republican strategists, however, say they are thrilled that McCain has sharpened and focused his attacks.
“I think it was overdue,” said GOP strategist Ron Christie.

Christie said for McCain to win, he has to “take off the gloves and try to reinforce some of the negative images that have been out there about Obama.”

But Shapiro thinks voters “aren’t interested in nasty, false attacks, and they’re not interested in four more years of Bush policies.”

“But that’s all he’s offering. And, with less than 30 days left, McCain is running out of time to show them otherwise,” Shapiro said. “This debate gives him one of his last opportunities to right his ship and provide an economic path forward.

“If all he does is attack Barack Obama, as he’s said he’ll do, it will be yet another colossal missed opportunity. In the face of those attacks, Barack Obama will continue to offer steady leadership, and talk about his plan to give real relief to the middle class and create good jobs here in America. That’s the real choice in this election.”