McCain Seeks Comeback in Final Month of Campaign

With exactly one month to go until Election Day, will the comeback kid strike again?

John McCain seems to be facing an uphill road to the White House, consistently trailing in national polls and slipping behind in practically every major battleground.

The recent focus on the economy may have contributed to Barack Obama's boost -- but the McCain campaign is fighting back hard, launching a character assault that on Saturday tapped McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, who accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists" because of his ties to '60s radical William Ayers.

Obama, for his part, launched a new line of attack Saturday on McCain's health care plan while continuing to paint McCain as the wrong person for the job of shoring up the struggling economy.

But this is the McCain who resurrected his campaign from near-collapse to take the Republican nomination. To turn the tables again, his advisers signaled they will spend the final weeks of the campaign on offense, bringing up Obama's personal relationships -- the kind that have provided fodder to conservative talk radio and caused trouble for Obama during the Democratic primaries

Palin fired the first salvo of this new phase of the campaign Saturday at a fundraiser in Colorado, criticizing Obama for his ties to Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground.

"Our opponent, though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect -- imperfect enough that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," she said, referencing a front-page story in The New York Times on Saturday that examined the Obama-Ayers connection. "Americans need to know this. ... I think, okay we gotta get the word out. This is in fairness to the electorate we gotta start telling people what the other side represents."

The campaign also referenced Obama's ties to Ayers in a statement Saturday morning, and McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds told FOX News they would continue to point out Obama's "associations that are questionable and point to his character and his judgment."

"Before people pull that lever in November, they have a right to know, and we have a duty to tell them, who Barack Obama is -- and to shine a light on some of those fairly liberal and sometimes downright troubling relationships that he's had," McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer told FOX News Saturday.

In a positive sign for McCain, Palin, who was under fire from conservatives and liberals alike for a set of shaky interviews last week, seemed to quiet the criticism with her debate performance against Joe Biden on Thursday. The performance showed a return to the tough persona Palin exhibited during the Republican convention.

The Republican nominee himself signaled that the upcoming presidential debate Tuesday would be the kickoff of a taut battle to the finish.

Asked at a Colorado campaign stop earlier in the week by a voter when he would "Take the gloves off," McCain responded: "How about Tuesday night?"

While Obama campaigned Saturday, McCain spent the day in Sedona, Ariz., preparing for the debate.

Democratic pollster Doug Schoen said McCain needs to keep the focus on Obama if he wants to turn the race around.

"John McCain has to change the dynamic in the race, because if he's unable to make the case that Barack Obama's not qualified or a risky choice, then I would bet that the current trend which has an Obama lead of 5, 6 points will continue," he said. "On the other hand if McCain is able to raise questions about Obama's supposed liberalism or his cultural radicalism or some of his ties ... that could begin to shift the balance in the race."

It's unclear what other relationships McCain will stress. Hillary Clinton, during the primaries, tried to hammer Obama for his ties to convict Tony Rezko and needled him for the controversy surrounding his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. While the McCain campaign has used the Rezko connection in recent ads, neither relationship has driven the general election candidates' discourse over the past several weeks.

"We're looking at a very aggressive last 30 days of turning the page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama's aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans," senior adviser Greg Strimple told reporters Thursday.

Polls would put the onus on McCain to shake up the race.

But Republican National Committee spokesman Alex Conant said the campaign will be able to pull ahead in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. The RNC pulled in a hefty $66 million in September to help supplement McCain's advertising.

"Barack Obama's built a huge campaign but I think we've built a smarter campaign," he said.

But going too negative in the final weeks poses obvious risks for McCain. The candidate who long billed himself as the straight-talking, bridge-building, no-nonsense maverick could alienate voters drawn to his reputation in the Senate and the image he has attempted to build on the campaign trail.