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ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico: Republican John McCain on Monday accused White House rival Barack Obama of blurring his past and offering no track record to point a way out of America's deepening economic crisis, as new polls showed Democrat Obama commanding a consistent lead.
A Gallup survey released on Monday found Obama holding a lead over McCain for the tenth straight day, pushing his lead to an eight-point advantage with just 29 days left to the November 4 election.
A CNN poll echoed Gallup's findings, with likely voters holding the Illinois senator with a 53 percent lead over 45 percent for McCain.
With the stakes rising, campaign tempers are heating up as the candidates head in to Tuesday's "town hall" clash, the second of their three debates.
On the eve of their battle in Nashville, Tennessee, McCain said the electioneering was drawing to a close and it was almost time to choose.
"The question is: in what direction will we go?" McCain asked a New Mexico rally.
"Will our country be a better place under the leadership of the next president - a more secure, prosperous, and just society?
"Will you be better off, in the jobs you hold now and in the opportunities you hope for," he asked.
McCain again questioned Obama's readiness for the job, saying: "For a guy who's already authored two memoirs, he's not exactly an open book.
"All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short: Who is the real Barack Obama?
"But ask such questions and all you get in response is another barrage of angry insults."
Obama, responding to his portrayal by McCain's campaign as a crony of "terrorists," fought fire with fire by highlighting his opponent's embroilment in a devastating 1980s financial scandal.
The Democrat's camp said the Republican was desperately trying to divert attention from his "erratic" handling of the US financial crisis by resorting to character assassination.
Speaking to reporters in Asheville, North Carolina, Obama noted that global markets were again plummeting and the contagion was spreading to banks in Europe, and that voters wanted to hear policy solutions during the upcoming debate.
So he said he was "surprised" to see an unidentified McCain strategist tell the New York Daily News that "if we keep talking about the economic crisis, we lose."
"I've got news for the McCain campaign, the American people are losing right now, they're losing their jobs, they're losing their health care, they're losing their homes, they're losing their savings," the Democrat said.
"I cannot imagine anything more important to talk about than the economic crisis and the notion that we'd want to brush that aside and engage in the usual political shenanigans and scare tactics that have come to characterise too many political campaigns, I think is not what the American people are looking for."
The McCain campaign has unleashed a blitz of negative ads to cast the Illinois senator as a radical liberal who would endanger the lives of US troops abroad and usher in a new era of interventionist, tax-raising government.
For the third day running, the Republican's camp hammered away at Obama's ties to professor of education William Ayers, a bomb-throwing militant during the Vietnam War.
Observers say the pair had only a loose relationship in Chicago's milieu of charity and politics.
But McCain's running mate Sarah Palin, who is leading the charge, said the Democrat was consorting with an "unrepentant terrorist."
Interviewed by African-American radio host Tom Joyner, Obama retorted: "If Senator McCain wants to have a character debate, I am happy to have that debate."
Obama rolled out a new broadcast and email onslaught recalling McCain's connection to jailed tycoon Charles Keating, the collapse of whose savings and loan firm wiped out the savings of many elderly retirees.
McCain was part of a group of lawmakers known as the "Keating Five" that received gifts and favours from the businessman and intervened with regulators to insist his company was in good health before it collapsed.
McCain escaped with a formal censure by the Senate in 1991 but spoke of the searing embarrassment caused by the scandal and went on to become a crusader for ethics reform. Overall, the US government had to spend 124 billion dollars to bail out the entire savings and loan industry. - AFP/de
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