With exactly one month until election day, will Bill Ayers, the anti-Vietnam War radical who helped found a bomb-planting protest group, morph into what some observers earlier had predicted -- the Willie Horton of the 2008 presidential campaign?
Horton, for those too young to remember, was a felon who, while on a weekend furlough from prison in Massachusetts, committed a heinous crime in Maryland. It happened under Michael Dukakis' gubernatorial watch, and in the final months of his 1988 White House bid the case was effectively used against him by his GOP rivals.
With this year's race entering its final stretch -- and Barack Obama having staked out a solid lead in recent polling -- John McCain's campaign has sent out word it's really ready to play hard ball against Obama (and here we naively thought the game already had been rough).
The matter first arose several months ago during the Democratic nomination battle, and the Obama campaign felt compelled to post a page on its website that depicted his association with Ayers as tenuous.
Today, in a front-page story, the New York Times took its crack at airing out the Ayers connection. Here's the key part of the piece:
A review of records ... and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”
Sarah Palin, campaigning in the Denver area, took that ball and ran with it.
The Times' Robin Abcarian relates that Palin, speaking at a fundraiser, used a wry reference to one of the well-publicized questions she faced recently from CBS' Katie Couric to broach the Ayers issue. Said the Republican vice presidential candidate:
There is a lot of interest, I guess, in what I read and what I’ve read lately. Well, I was reading my copy of today’s New York Times [audience boos] and I was interested to read about Barack’s friends from Chicago [audience cheers].
I get to bring this up not to pick a fight, but it was there in the New York Times, so we are gonna talk about it. Turns out one of Barack’s earliest supporters is a man who, according to the New York Times -- and they are hardly ever wrong [audience laughs] -- was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.' Wow. ...
Referring to Obama, she continued:
This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America. We see America as the greatest force for good in this world. If we can be that beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy and can live in a country that would allow intolerance in the equal rights that again our military men and women fight for and die for for all of us. Our opponent, though, is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country?
[UPDATE: Palin said much the same later in the day at a big rally in Carson, Calif. Abcarian reports that Palin signaled early in her remarks to an overflow crowd of more than 8,000 in the tennis stadium of Carson’s Home Depot Center that she would be going after Obama. “One of my campaign staff said as I was walking out here, ‘OK, the heels are on, the gloves are off,’ ” Palin said.]
Her comments in Colorado already had given the Associated Press the obvious lead for its story -- that she accused Obama of....
ABC's "This Week": Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R), Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).
CBS' "Face The Nation": Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D-Mich.), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) and The New York Times' David Brooks.
The also-rans continue to run, thanks to the magic of political action committees.
Hillary Clintonis traveling from San Francisco to Los Angeles today holding fundraisers on behalf of her party’s presidential nominee, Barack Obama. Mitt Romneywas in Nevada last week and continues to travel the country often on behalf of his party’s nominee, John McCain.
No longer candidates, they're now surrogates. To pay their way, they're using money raised in $5,000 increments in their political action committees.
After spending $105 million, including $44.6 million of his own money, on a failed effort to capture the GOP presidential nomination, Romney created Free and Strong America, a political action committee to help McCain and other Republicans win on Nov. 4.
He has raised $1.56 million, spent $1.1 million and had $474,000 in the bank, according to the latest Federal Election Commission reports filed last month.
Clinton jump-started her HillPAC after she ended her presidential campaign in June. She raised $670,000 and spent $476,300 this summer, and ended August with $201,000 in the bank. Clinton spent $220 million on her losing campaign, not counting nearly $10 million in unpaid presidential campaign bills, plus $13.1 million she loaned her campaign.
Romney and Clinton each are relying on presidential campaign donors to pay for their latest undertakings. Romney is collecting $5,000 from friends from his investment days, as well as newer backers including cattle rancher and racehorse owner John Harris of Harris Ranch in Coalinga.
Clinton has received $5,000 from Hollywood figures including Cheryl Saban, Berry Gordy and Clarence Avant.
Also giving are wealthy San Franciscans including Susie Tomkins Buell, her husband Mark Buell and Walter Shorenstein, along with Brian Greenspun, a longtime Clinton friend who owns the Las Vegas Sun and is a board member of Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times.
In an interview today, Greenspun said he continues to give to Clinton because she is one of the most “able Americans and politicians in this country.” As such, he said, she does a better job than he could of deciding which candidates are worthy of support.
“I trust her and I trust her judgment, and if I could give her more money, I would,” he said.
On Friday morning in St. Louis, Sarah Palin's father, Chuck Heath, showed up at Lambert Field toting moose antlers -- not the usual sort of carry-on you see on a campaign plane.
It was unclear where the headgear formerly belonging to a moose was stowed on the day's first flight, to Dallas, where Palin attended a fundraiser. But later, as the plane began its descent into San Antonio for her second stop of the day, the mystery was solved, thanks to the federal regulations that require the curtains separating the cabins be open at takeoff and landing.
The door to the pilots' cabin was open, as well, allowing an observer in the press cabin to note that the antlers had been placed -- macho style -- on the plane's dashboard of the plane.
Well before landing, the captain removed the antlers and gently placed them on the floor between him and his first officer.
A few hours later, the antlers were back on the dashboard, leading the way to Denver.
Turns out that Heath had schlepped them from Wasilla, Alaska, for his daughter to sign. They belong to a family friend, who wanted the autograph as a memento of her meteoric rise. They will not be a permanent fixture on Palin's plane.
And for non-hunters out there, the moose whose head the antlers once adorned lost them the old fashioned way: they were shed.
Sarah Palin wasted precious little time trying to establish a personal connection with the huge audience that tuned in for her Thursday night debate with Joe Biden.
In her very first answer, she evoked the image of Saturday soccer games where parents, while watching their children dash about from the sidelines, candidly discuss their concerns about the economy. Just a few minutes later, she dropped the phrases "Joe Six-Pack" and "hockey mom" into one of her responses.
Biden -- as much a creature of Washington as Palin is not -- waited much longer to seek to establish a visceral bond with his listeners. Indeed, the 90-minute verbal joust was nearing its end when he did so.
But the story he movingly related -- of his experience as a single dad to two young sons seriously hurt in a car accident that killed his wife and daughter -- widely was viewed as his standout moment in the debate.
It certainly moved sportscaster and actress Lisa Guerrero, who lost her mother at a young age. And it spurred her to offer reflections on men, emotions and our culture for The Times' new blog, The Fabulous Forum. We commend the posting to your attention.
Expect network television executives to any minute now start a grass-roots movement with one simple aim: more debates starring Sarah Palinand Joe Biden.
The buzz surrounding the Thursday night forum, the only one they're scheduled to have, translated into whopping viewership numbers, the Nielsen Co. reported today.
The figures not only obliterated the previous record for a debate featuring vice presidential candidates -- the 1984 face-off between incumbent George H.W. Bush and Geraldine Ferraro -- but tied for second place as the most-watched debate ever.
But the estimated 69.9 million watching the Palin/Biden encounter matched the Nielsen number of a 1992 debate that featured Bush (then president), Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.
It had been expected that Thursday's debate would exceed viewership for the initial verbal skirmishing six days earlier between the tops of this year's presidential tickets, John McCain and Barack Obama.
The figure for that debate came in at 52.4 million -- held down, in part, because it occurred on a Friday night, when lots of Americans are otherwise occupied.
But interest surrounding Palin -- both from supporters and detractors -- clearly drove Thursday's numbers to their stratospheric heights. A Nielsen breakdown of viewership in the nation's largest markets showed Baltimore with the highest rating -- 59.1% of the households with televisions in that community were tuned to the debate.
Ranking second, with a 58.3 rating, was the St. Louis market. The debate was held in the area -- at Washington University -- but it already had been established that the community is focused on the campaign. It posted the highest rating (52.1) for the McCain/Obama debate.
The Times' Matea Gold, at our Show Tracker blog, has more on the ratings report.
-- Don Frederick
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In Thursday night's vice presidential debate, Sarah Palin took a swipe at what has quickly become one of her favorite targets, saying she would prefer to speak directly to voters -- instead of having her message mediated by the "mainstream media."
"I like being able to answer these tough questions without the filter, even, of the mainstream media kind of telling viewers what they've just heard," Palin said, as the debate came to a close. "I'd rather be able to just speak to the American people like we just did."
This morning, in her first post-debate interview, Palin elaborated, telling Fox News' Carl Cameron that she felt exasperated in her recent interviews with Katie Couric. (Those interviews, of course, were widely panned.)
The first flush of polls gauging reaction to Thursday's Sarah Palin/Joe Biden debate gave the nod to the latter (check out how all-important independents broke in this survey spotlighted by our colleague Frank James at the Swamp).
John McCain, no doubt, is scoffing at such findings -- there was no doubt in his mind what happened in the faceoff.
“How about Sarah Palin last night?” he enthused to thousands of supporters packed into an arena today on a college campus in Pueblo, Colo.
His crowd roared their approval and pounded their feet on the metal bleachers, The Times' Seema Mehta reports.
McCain, who goes way back in Washington with Palin's rival, added with a chuckle, "I almost felt a little sorry last night for my old friend Joe Biden."
He continued: "She did a magnificent job. She’s the news for the big-spending, smooth-talking, me-first, country-second crowd in Washington and Wall Street. We’ve got a message, we’ve got a message, Sarah Palin and I: Change is coming. … They’re not going to like it, my friends.”
Barack Obama, as expected, gave kudos to Biden as he campaigned today in Abington, Pa. And he made sure to highlight his running mate's links to the state, The Times' Maeve Reston relates.
“Didn’t Joe Biden, a fellow some people call the third senator from Pennsylvania … didn’t he do a great job?” Obama said, as his crowd cheered. “Scranton boy. Done good. I was so proud of Joe. America, I think, saw clearly why I felt he’d be such a great vice president, especially during these difficult, challenging times.”
-- Don Frederick
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The National Rifle Assn. is about to turn up the volume on its campaign against Barack Obama, airing more ads taking him to task over his gun record.
Starting as early as Sunday, the NRA will be airing a new batch of spots in more battleground states, such as Ohio, Virginia and Florida. As colleague Noam Levey reported back in June, some say the NRA is losing sway. But Democrats, who generally favor restrictions on guns, still shy away from the issue, particularly in must-win swing states.
The NRA already is up with spots in Colorado, New Mexico and Pennsylvania. Some use Obama’s line, uttered at a San Francisco fundraiser, about "bitter" people clinging to their guns. Obama's attorneys sent letters asking that television stations cease airing the ads, but the spots continue to show on cable.
The NRA has set up a website attacking Obama, and so far has disclosed spending $2.2 million on its independent expenditure campaign against the Democratic nominee, Federal Election Commission records show.
That's just a fraction of what the final total will be. NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said the organization will end up spending well into the “eight figures” -- some have estimated as much as $40 million -- by Nov. 4. The group spent $20 million on ads against Sen. John Kerry four years ago.
“Things are a little more expensive this time around,” Arulanandam said.
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt says "Obama has always believed that the 2nd Amendment protects the individual right to own a firearm." The gunners’ group is claiming that Obama would be the most anti-gun president in American history.
John McCain also has taken to talking about Obama's gun views, declaring last week that "if Senator Obama is elected president, the rights of law-abiding gun owners will be at risk." McCain noted that he opposed legislation to "ban guns, ban ammunition and ban magazines."
Obama's stand on guns might not be such a bad thing in the view of many Californians. Led by Sen. Dianne Feinsteinin Washington and California politicians including Gray Davis and outgoing state Senate leader Don Perata, California has led efforts to restrict military-style semi-automatic weapons, large magazines and the sale of cheap handguns most often used in robberies.
“I don’t believe we’ll be spending money in California,” Arulanandam said.
-- Dan Morain
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No surprise here -- the nouns "maverick" and "reform" were heard early and often in the Thursday night debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden.
John McCain long had laid claim to the "maverick" title, and as his running mate, Palin quickly worked it into her initial answers. Overall, a word search of the debate transcript shows she uttered the singular or plural form of it six times.
But in an upset, Biden used it more often -- nine times, in fact. That's because, as the debate was coming to a close and in what was one of his stronger moments, he directly questioned McCain's claim to the maverick title. He summed up: "He's not been a maverick on virtually anything that genuinely affects the things that people really talk about around their kitchen table."
Palin looked for every opportunity to work the word "reform" into a sentence. In all, she said it 13 times.
In something of a stunner, Biden didn't use it at all. But he did use "change" -- in the context of a different direction that he and Barack Obama would bring to the White House -- 13 times.
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Our Bloggers
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the Countdown to Crawford blog here at The Times.
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