CHICAGO (AFP) — Democrat Barack Obama went after White House rival John McCain's core campaign theme of honor and integrity Monday with a new ad accusing the Republican of stooping to deception, sleaze and lies.
The 30-second television spot was released as the two camps responded to the crisis on Wall Street unleashed by the failure of investment giant Lehman Brothers, which prompted a TV ad from McCain.
The Obama ad showed McCain exclaiming during his failed bid for the Republican nomination in 2000: "I will not take the low road to the highest office in this land."
It then cited an array of media commentaries damning McCain's own ad onslaught on Obama as being "truly vile," larded with "dishonest smears" and amounting to the "most disgraceful, dishonorable campaign" yet.
"After voting with (President George W.) Bush 90 percent of the time, proposing the same disastrous economic policies, it seems deception is all he has left," the Illinois senator's ad concluded.
It was a stinging attack on the Vietnam War hero who prizes his own honor and, in 2000, lost the Republican nomination to Bush after a hate-filled campaign leading up the year's South Carolina primary.
McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said the ad was Obama's "desperate effort to move away from talking about his thin but alarming record on the issues, and it isn't going to reform Washington or strengthen our economy."
Last week, in one intensely controversial ad, the McCain campaign accused Obama of advocating explicit sex education to kindergarten-aged children.
In reality, the bill he voted for as an Illinois lawmaker mandated warnings for young children about sexual predators.
The Democratic National Committee meanwhile launched a new "online counter" and web page to chronicle the "lies and distortions" of McCain and his vice presidential running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
DNC spokesman Damien LaVera cited at least 51 instances of non-partisan groups crying foul over attacks from McCain and Palin, who he said were running "one of the most dishonest and dishonorable presidential campaigns in history."
Democrats seized on a remark on Fox News Sunday from Bush's long-time counselor Karl Rove, the master of some of the darker arts of modern politics, that McCain had gone "one step too far" in some of his ads attacking Obama.
Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal said Monday that despite Palin-McCain claims that she shares his opposition to "earmark" funding from the federal government, the governor has asked US taxpayers to fund 453 million dollars in Alaskan projects over the past two years.
Palin is taking heat for repeatedly saying she blocked a notorious multi-million dollar project to build a bridge to a sparsely inhabited island in her state, when she initially backed it and did not return all the federal dollars doled out for it.
And in other unfavorable news coverage, questions were being raised about why Palin's husband Todd was copied on emails concerning official state business.
McCain himself denied on Friday that his attacks were rooted in untruth.
"Actually, they are not lies," the Arizona senator said on the ABC show "The View." "This is a tough campaign."
Obama, who was heading to Colorado Monday, has launched a fight-back against Republican "lies and phony outrage," but polls suggest the race is tighter than ever in the countdown to November 4.
A new Suffolk University poll on Monday of the crucial electoral battleground of Ohio, suggested that McCain was up by four percentage points, 46 to 42 percent, apparently buoyed by popular approval of his choice of Palin.
The row over untruths in the presidential race came as the global markets crisis sent shockwaves through the campaign.
After Lehman filed for bankruptcy, the McCain ad said: "Our economy in crisis. Only proven reformers John McCain and Sarah Palin can fix it."
The Republicans say they have "maverick" records in contrast to what they call the empty words of Obama, who called the Lehman crisis a "major threat" to the US economy.
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