Campaign’s last days recall desperate tactics!

WASHINGTON — Unfortunately for Sen. John McCain’s legacy and the mood of the country, the Republican presidential candidate wound up his quest with moves straight out of the Karl Rove smear-and-fear playbook.
At the same time, the windup of the campaign of Democrat Barack Obama stirs memories of how Republican Thomas E. Dewey ended his 1948 failed effort.
Every survey in the nation had the fiery Democratic President Harry S. Truman hopelessly behind Dewey. Dewey was all sweetness and light, the way Obama was on TV last Wednesday.
In a way, Obama fell into the trap laid for him by Republican strategists. In the mail, on the stump and in the robocalls, McCain and the GOP are painting Obama as a “socialist,” and a friend of “terrorists.”
The Republican National Committee’s last minute mailer has “terrorist” on the front with a big picture of Obama inside. The legend says “Not who you think he is.”
If Obama matched fire with fire, any slip of his tongue, any show of ferocity might confirm the slanders. So Obama stayed with the grandeur posture.
One of McCain’s last-minute ploys was picking up on broadcaster Sean Hannity’s charge that Obama is a “socialist.”
It’s laughable considering President Bush’s embrace of a plan for the government to buy ownership of banks and investment houses, and possibly other businesses.
But McCain put a nasty twist on it, charging before predominantly white audiences in Florida and the Carolinas that Obama is a “redistributionist” — meaning that that the Chicagoan wants to redistribute wealth.