McCain presses Obama in last and pointed debate

From wire reports

Sen. John McCain repeatedly tried to put Sen. Barack Obama on the defensive Wednesday in the final debate of the presidential race, accusing him of seeking to raise taxes, associating with a former terrorist and engaging in an unmatched barrage of negative campaigning.

Obama, pivoting away from McCain's attacks, accused his opponent of trying to divert attention from the nation's ailing economy, refocusing the debate on his central assertion about McCain: that he would represent a continuation of Bush administration economic policies. It was a line of attack that McCain was prepared for.

"Senator Obama, I am not President Bush," McCain said. "If you want to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago."

He asserted emphatically, "I want to take the country in a different direction."

Their exchanges were the most spirited of their three debates, with Obama repeatedly accusing McCain of relying on attack politics to distract Americans from the nation's economic crisis on a day when the Dow plunged 733 points.

Saying that negative campaigning had been the "primary focus" of McCain's campaign, Obama said the race should instead center on what Americans "deserve over the next four weeks," adding "that we talk about what's most pressing to them - the economic crisis."

The two also had a heated exchange about Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., the civil rights leader who last weekend issued a blistering statement that said the angry rhetoric at the rallies of McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, reminded him of the era of George Wallace, the late segregationist governor of Alabama. McCain, who has often cited Lewis as a man he greatly admires, said he was surprised by the statement, and Wednesday night asked Obama to repudiate it.

Obama responded that Lewis had made the statement "unprompted by my campaign" because he was troubled by what he was hearing. "In which all the public reports indicated that people were shouting, when my name came up, things like 'terrorist' and 'kill him.' And then your running mate didn't mention, didn't stop, didn't say, 'Hold on a second, that's kind of out of line.' "

Nonetheless, Obama said, Lewis "inappropriately drew a comparison between what was happening there and what was happening in the civil rights movement."

Last week, The Washington Post reported such an incident during a Palin rally in Clearwater, Fla. The Secret Service investigated and found no indication that "kill him" was ever said, or if it was said, that the remark was directed at Obama.

Listening to tapes of that rally, the Secret Service heard "tell him" or "tell them," but agents never heard "kill him," Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said Wednesday.

The Secret Service is looking into a second such allegation from a Palin rally in Scranton, Pa.

Wednesday night, McCain repeated the principles of his plan to deal with the current financial crisis, a combination of tax cuts and relaxed rules for withdrawals from retirement accounts, along with a freeze on federal spending. He also repeated his call from a week ago for the government to buy distressed mortgages and allow banks and homeowners to renegotiate them on more lenient terms.

The caustic exchanges were a sharp departure from the first two debates, and the start of Wednesday's debate offered little clue to what was ahead, when McCain looked straight at Obama and addressed him as "Senator."

Repeatedly trying to pivot away from McCain's critiques, Obama often returned to the economic struggles of Americans, and stressed that his economic proposals - a tax cut for households and small businesses making less than $250,000 a year and tax breaks for companies that create new jobs - will provide immediate help to the struggling middle class.

McCain challenged him on this, citing an encounter Obama had with a plumber while campaigning in Ohio last weekend. The plumber, Joe Wurzelbacher, complained that his small business would see his taxes rise under the Obama tax plan. Obama responded in defense of his plan, "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

McCain, who repeatedly alluded to "Joe the plumber" throughout the debate, cited the exchange and called it "class warfare," as Obama slowly shook his head.

"Why would you want to increase anyone's taxes right now, anyone in America, when we're having such a tough time?" McCain said.

Neither candidate offered a convincing answer to a question from the debate moderator, Bob Schieffer of CBS News, about what programs or proposals they would cut to bring the federal budget deficit under control.

Obama ducked the question entirely, while McCain answered that he would impose an across-the-board spending freeze.

For most of the first half of the 90-minute debate, Obama was on the defensive. A half an hour into the debate, McCain brought up the name of William Ayers, the 1960s radical that he has sought for several weeks to tie to Obama as an example, as Palin has put it, of Obama's "palling around with terrorists."

McCain said, "I don't care about an old washed-up terrorist," but that "we need to know the full extent of that relationship."

Obama said that Ayers had never been involved in any aspect of his campaign.

McCain also criticized Obama for what he suggested was his association with the group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which McCain said was engaged in voter fraud and undermining American democracy.

In response, Obama said of ACORN, "Apparently they just filled out a bunch of names." He said he had nothing to do with them now, although he said he had represented them 10 years ago in trying to implement a motor voter law.

This story was compiled from reports by The New York Times and The Associated Press.