The first question I asked John McCain and then Barack Obama was: How do you feel about the tone and direction of the campaign so far?
No surprise. Both men pronounced themselves thoroughly frustrated by the personal bitterness and negativism they have seen in the two months since they learned they would be running against each other.
"I'm very sorry about it," McCain said in a Saturday interview at his Arlington headquarters. "I think we could have avoided at least some of this if we had agreed to do the town hall meetings" together, as he had suggested, during the summer months.
Obama, in a phone interview yesterday from Elkhart, Ind., argued that "the classic tit-for-tat campaigning" of recent weeks "is part of the politics of the past that we have to move beyond." Ironically, having turned down McCain's proposal for weekly joint town halls, Obama argued that the formal debates, starting in late September, may refocus the campaign on real issues.
On June 4, McCain proposed 10 town-hall-style debates before screened audiences of uncommitted independent voters across the country. Obama countered by offering two such sessions this summer, one on Independence Day and one in August, and the idea died. Three days ago, Obama said he would participate
only in the three debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, the first of which is scheduled for Sept. 26.
Since the idea of joint town meetings was scrapped, the campaign has featured tough and often negative ads and speeches. They culminated last week in an exchange in which Obama said that McCain and his supporters were calling attention to the Democrat's unusual name and the fact that "he doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills." The McCain campaign in turn accused Obama of playing "the race card."
In the interviews, both candidates expressed indignation at what was being said about them. "I'm not going to be smeared," McCain declared. "I went through that once, and I'm not going to do it again. . . . If anybody says I'm a racist . . . I'm not going to stand for that."
Obama insisted that he had never made such an accusation. And he condemned McCain for suggesting that "I would rather lose a war to win a political campaign. That is patently offensive. When his campaign ran an ad suggesting that I had refused to visit wounded troops because I couldn't have TV cameras with me, reporters immediately said that was patently false. . . . I'm not going to sit back and let my record be distorted."
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