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On the campaign trail, both ABC's Ron Claiborne (embargoed link) and CBS' Dean Reynolds were in New Mexico to listen to Republican John McCain's latest tactics against Democrat Barack Obama. Claiborne called it "by far" McCain's "fiercest, most sustained, harshest attack" on his rival. Reynolds tarred the two candidates with the same brush, saying they both "downshifted from policy to personality" before conceding that it was "the trailing Republican ticket making the first move." The downshift in response by Obama that Reynolds was referring to was his campaign's release of a 13-minute online minidocumentary rehashing McCain's membership of the Keating Five during the Savings & Loan scandal of the late '80s. An Senate Ethics Committee investigation found that McCain "used poor judgment" but did "nothing improper," Claiborne reminded us.
It was not clear what precisely McCain was driving at with his insinuations. "For a guy who has already authored two memoirs he is not exactly an open book" and "Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there is always a back story with Sen Obama." Reynolds cited a new McCain ad that "packs the words 'dangerous,' 'dishonorable,' 'liberal' and 'risky' into just 30 seconds." Both correspondents turned to Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate, for specifics. Obama is "imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists," she alleged. Reynolds corrected her use of the plural: "She is actually referring to one person," he noted, William Ayers "a university professor and a neighbor." They are "acquaintances not pals," mutual friends told Reynolds. Ayers is "the founder of the Weather Underground, which carried out anti-government bombings in the late '60s, when Obama was eight years old."
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