Debate stakes higher for McCain; insults mount

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-07 09:20

WASHINGTON -- Running short on time and behind in the polls, Republican candidate John McCain has the most riding on the second presidential debate on Tuesday, though Barack Obama will be out of his scripted comfort zone in the town hall-style confrontation.

Tom Brokaw (bottom C), NBC News Special Correspondent and moderator of the upcoming debate, between US Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), looks over the set at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee October 6, 2008. The second debate between the two candidates takes place October 7th. [Agencies]

It could be ugly if Monday's tussling is any indication.

Tuesday night's debate comes exactly four weeks before November 4 Election Day with a lot going on both inside and outside the campaign: Polling shows Obama approaching the 270 Electoral College votes needed for victory, Wall Street is tumbling even further and both candidates are escalating character attacks.

Their target audience in the debate: the roughly 10 percent of the electorate who are undecided and an additional quarter who say they might still change their minds.

The debate, at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, is supposed to be divided equally between the economy and foreign policy, but given the global financial turmoil, economic questions may well dominate. As markets were plunging in Europe and Asia, as well as the US on Monday, the candidates were going after each other.

In Florida, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin tried to tie Obama to 1960s-era radical William Ayers and to the Democrat's former pastor, the incendiary Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In New Mexico, McCain, himself asked, "Who is the real Senator Obama," referred to him critically as a "Chicago politician" and argued that the Democrat says one thing and does another.

Obama, in turn, asserted in North Carolina that McCain was engaging "in the usual political shenanigans and smear tactics" to distract from economic issues, even as his own aides in Chicago assailed the Republican nominee for "an angry tirade" and went after him for his role in the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s that was blamed for a subsequent recession.

McCain, a four-term Arizona senator, is trailing in polls and facing dwindling options to thwart Democrat Obama in an enormously troublesome political landscape for Republicans. Obama, the first-term Illinois senator, wants to solidify his lead and avoid any major debate misstep that could set him back in his quest to become the country's first black president.

Each hunkered down with top aides over the weekend to prepare, McCain at his vacation compound near Sedona, Ariz., Obama in the western mountains of newly competitive North Carolina.

In the 90-minute debate, NBC newsman Tom Brokaw will facilitate questions from the audience as tens of millions of viewers tune in from across the country.

"Generally, the stakes in this are higher for McCain," said Phil Musser, a former executive director of the Republican Governors Association. "It's probably one of the last and most important opportunities for him to lay out an economic vision that resonates with middle America in a format that lends itself to doing just that."

But Republicans and Democrats alike say even a strong McCain performance may not be enough.

"McCain can win the debate, but the trajectory of this election would not be fundamentally altered unless Obama also made a pretty dramatic and serious mistake," said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist in Vice President Al Gore's 2000 campaign.

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