WASHINGTON: Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin accused Democratic candidate Barack Obama over the weekend of “palling around with terrorists,” in the latest sign the US election campaign is turning increasingly nasty.
The comment by Palin refers to Bill Ayers, a founding member of the radical leftist terrorist group Weather Underground, which was involved in a string of mostly nonfatal bombings in the late 60s and early 70s, mainly in protest of US involvement in Vietnam.
Obama was eight years old at the time of Ayers’ radicalism, but the paths of the two men —- who both have become prominent figures in the Chicago area — have crossed on a few occasions in recent years.
The Obama campaign quickly dismissed Palin’s comment as “gutter politics.”
With Obama rising in polls while the country struggles in the grip of a financial crisis, the Republican candidate Sen. John McCain’s camp has focused on his opponent’s character, judgment and personal associations. “We are looking for a very aggressive last 30 days,” said Greg Strimple, one of McCain’s top advisers.
Vice presidential candidates have traditionally been called upon to engage in harsher attacks on the opposing team. Palin has not disappointed in this regard, launching an assault on Obama just days after both candidates urged Congress to set aside partisan politics to pass a $700 billion financial rescue package in a bid to revive credit markets as unemployment continues to rise.
Palin attacked Obama for his brief political relationship with Ayers, now a university professor. The two men have attended the same functions on several occasions since 1995 when they both worked with a nonprofit group trying to raise funds for a school improvement project and a charitable foundation.
Obama and Ayers also live in the same Chicago neighborhood and have served on a charity board together. Obama has condemned Ayers’ past involvement in terrorist activity. Ayers himself never faced jail time because the police tactics used was deemed excessive by the courts.
Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said the two men had not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Obama came to the US Senate in 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they encountered each other on the street in a Chicago neighborhood where both live.
“Today, the McCain-Palin team took their discredited, dishonorable campaign one desperate step further, announcing that they were going to try turning a page on this financial crisis and would rather spend their time tearing down Barack Obama than laying out a plan to build up our economy,” LaBolt said in a statement.
Palin’s remarks, however, will play well with a segment of the Republican base that has embraced the false portrayal of Obama as a foreign-born Muslim elitist with ties to terrorism.
Polls have shown that voters trust Obama more than McCain to handle the economy, and the fact that McCain is running to succeed an unpopular Republican president makes his position more difficult. A survey of academic economists by The Economist finds the majority — at times by overwhelming margins — believe Obama has the superior economic plan, a firmer grasp of economics and will appoint better economic advisers.
McCain and Obama will get to spar in person tomorrow when they meet for the second of three nationally televised presidential debates, this one in Nashville, Tennessee.
