Republican presidential candidate U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., redoubled his efforts to exploit character flaws in his Democratic opponent, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., labeling him "dangerous" and a "Chicago politician."
Obama, in turn, painted McCain as "out of touch" and "erratic in a crisis."
Clearly, the race to the White House has taken a turn for the ugly - or at least the uglier. But how well this strategy will work for McCain in the face of a polling slump largely revolving around economic issues is yet to be seen, if it works at all.
"I think right now, McCain's basically grasping for something to stop the bleeding," Wes Leckrone, assistant professor of government and politics at Widener University, said of the change in tactics.
"(The past) three weeks have not been very kind to him," said Leckrone. "There's no reason he could not potentially come back, but once this lead for Obama really solidifies, it will be over for him unless he can do something."
A Gallup Poll conducted with 2,747 registered voters between Oct. 5-7 showed Obama held a commanding 52-41 percent lead over his opponent nationally, his largest lead to date in the poll.
Notes on that poll indicate it is still far too early to estimate election probabilities - Ronald Reagan, for instance, rallied from a 3-point deficit in 1980 to win the election by 10 percentage points - and the lead could change hands again before this thing is over. But it also assigns Obama's advantage to voter concerns with the economy, which isn't an issue that is likely to go away anytime soon.
Obama overtook McCain when the financial crisis worsened in mid-September, according to poll notes, and without a "game-changer" taking the issue off the table before the election, Obama could sail to victory on economics alone.
It wouldn't be the first time. G. Terry Madonna, director of Franklin and Marshall College's Center for Politics and Public Affairs, cited at least two other instances recently - in 1980 and 1992 - when respective challengers Reagan and Bill Clinton were able to oust incumbents saddled with a struggling economy.
Then-President Jimmy Carter unsuccessfully tried to fend off Reagan in 1980 with character issues, calling him a loose cannon that shouldn't have his finger on The Button.
The Clinton campaign of 1990 focused almost exclusively on a faltering economy and won, despite soaring 90-percent approval ratings for sitting President George H.W. Bush just a year earlier.
Both Reagan and Clinton were able to brush off character attacks on the strength of their economic campaign planks, and Obama could be in line to do the same.
Obama and McCain have put barriers between their proposed economic policies and those of the Bush administration, to which Leckrone said the current financial morass is largely ascribed.
This is obviously more of a challenge for McCain, whose party is in power - hence the poor polling on the economy and subsequent spate of negative ads.
"Obviously they work, or (campaigns) wouldn't do them," said Madonna of the ads. "I just think, given this situation, they're going to be less effective, given the economy and what voters are looking for in terms of a president," which is essentially some way out of this economic mess.
Smear machine works?
According to the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin, the candidates spent a combined $28 million on television ads between Sept. 28-Oct. 4, with Obama spending $17.5 million and McCain and the Republican National Committee spending $11 million.
McCain is limited to an $84 million federal subsidy and the Republican National Committee has been picking up the remainder of the tab. Obama originally said he would also limit himself to the subsidy, but later changed his mind in favor of an unprecedented wave of private financing.
Nearly 100 percent of McCain's advertising was negative during that period, according to an Advertising Project report, while 34 percent of Obama's ads were negative.
That's a flip from the week following the Republican National Convention, when 77 percent of Obama's commercials were negative compared to only about half of McCain's ads.
Such tactics lie far afield from the promises both sides made earlier in this campaign for a more positive and productive discourse on the issues, but according to Madonna, they are effective.
"Most of the time they work, or they wouldn't use them," said Madonna. "Character and judgment are very, very important qualities for voters when they do cast votes - far more important for voters, by the way, than issues."
According to Advertising Project Director Ken Goldstein, 10 of the 15 states where candidates are now running ads went for President George W. Bush in 2004. A New York Times analysis last weekend also indicated Obama is competitive in nine states that went for Bush in 2004, while McCain is competitive in only four that went for Kerry.
All of which came on the heels of a McCain campaign decision to pull up stakes in Michigan after his polls took a fall there and in other important battleground states, of which Pennsylvania, with 21 electoral votes, is one.
"(McCain) has got to halt the slide and move it in the other direction, and he's got less than four weeks to go with one debate, so the question is, can negative ads alone do this?" said Madonna.
He was not convinced they could.
"I think he needs another 'Hail Mary,'" said Madonna. "He's had a couple already, but this slide seems irreversible and I guess they've decided that this character and judgment (issue) is the way they've decided to go."
An age-old game
Of course, negative advertising is nothing new. According to Kerwin Swint, a professor of political science at Kennesaw State University and author of "Mudslingers: The 25 Dirtiest Political Campaigns of All Time," negative campaigning in America goes all the way back to the election of 1800.
Swint, in an article for mental floss magazine, details a rift between lifelong friends John Adams and Thomas Jefferson during the campaign, in which "Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward."
According to Swint, Jefferson went so far as to hire a character assassin named James Callendar - which worked out well in the election, but later came back to haunt him when Callendar revealed Jefferson's longtime tryst with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings.
Digging up dirt
So there are certain risks, as Madonna pointed out. The ads also have to resonate with voters as fair, truthful and relevant, he said.
For instance, while McCain has tried to make "elite" a four-letter word and lump Obama in with celebrities like Paris Hilton (i.e. undeservedly famous for no discernable reason), he has left alone the Illinois senator's relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and steered clear of pointing to Obama's middle name as a scare tactic. More than that, McCain
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has condemned such tactics in the past.
But his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, said the Wright relationship should be fair game, and last weekend said Obama finds America so imperfect that he would "pal around with terrorists."
Palin said she was referencing a New York Times article that laid out Obama's ties to Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground terrorist group that bombed the Pentagon some 35 years ago.
The two served together on the Annenberg Challenge Project and Woods Fund boards, and Ayers hosted a fundraiser for Obama early in his political career. Obama has since denounced Ayers' terrorist actions.
The Obama camp, in response to Palin's comments, took aim at McCain's ties to Charles Keating as one of the "Keating Five" that intervened with banking regulators on behalf of the former savings and loan executive after he made substantial campaign contributions to McCain and other legislators.
The Senate Ethics Committee cited McCain for "poor judgment," but he escaped relatively unscathed. McCain has called the incident "the worst mistake of my life."
Nonetheless, Leckrone said that connection was "gold" for the Obama campaign, given the current financial environment, and McCain will need more than a few negative ads to turn the tide.
Low blows may backfire
According to an article on negative campaigning by William S. Bike at CompleteCampaigns.com, candidates who engage in negative campaigning need to tread carefully.
"What negative advertising does is get your supporters committed and excited," wrote Bike. "Those who are indifferent are so turned off that they are less likely to vote, as are people who are for the other candidate - so not only does it help you, but it depresses turnout. The ideal, rational goal is to turn out your most committed supporters and make sure nobody else turns out."
But, he warns, negative campaigning can also backfire.
"It turns off voters and causes opponents to respond in kind," Bike noted. "It can cause voters to wonder if your candidate has some of the same negatives his or her opponent does and can create a negative campaign opening for your candidate's opponent."
Such was the rationale offered by the Obama campaign last week for his reversal on dredging up McCain's past connections to Keating.
Obama had said earlier in the campaign that doing so was "not germane to the presidency," but his campaign said the Keating ads came only in the face of the McCain camp's Ayers charges.
Leckrone said negative ads are really more effective if the candidate is an unknown on the national stage - they offer a way to define the other guy in any light you want.
The Ayers issue has been out there for months, he said, and with such a protracted and visible primary season, coupled with recent presidential debates, these things lose resonance because the electorate has already become too familiar with the candidate.
"We all get that about character and judgment and all that, and they're truly important aspects of the president," said Madonna. "But we've now been two years into this race and we've been through a long primary process ... (so) what is it that all of a sudden now is going to make such a huge difference to voters that they didn't know before?"
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