The Trail

THE AYERS CONTROVERSY

Obama Responds With New Ads

Barack Obama is pushing back anew against the "palling around with terrorists" charge -- running two television advertisements and a radio spot in states where the Republican Party has ads noting his association with 1960s radical Bill Ayers.

The Obama ads directly take on charges that he launched his political career in Ayers's living room, among others. One of Obama's TV ads shows an exterior shot of a Ramada Inn, and a narrator, with a weary-sounding tsk-tsk, says Obama started his "first campaign here, not in anyone's living room."

The controversy over Ayers appears to have had little negative impact on Obama. In a just-released New York Times-CBS News poll, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they had already heard "a lot" or "some" about Obama's association with Ayers. Nine percent volunteered that they were bothered by that connection. A majority, 56 percent, said there was nothing about Obama's background or past associations that concerned them.

The poll showed Obama up 14 points over John McCain overall.

The subject of Ayers is expected to arise in tonight's debate. McCain, in fact, said Obama had "probably ensured" that it will come up after Obama accused him of being too afraid to say it to his face in their two earlier encounters.

"It's not that I give a damn about some old washed-up terrorist and his terrorist wife," McCain told a radio interviewer.

"What I care about, and what the American people care about, is whether [Obama] is being truthful with the American people, whether it be on raising taxes or whether it be his commitment to take public financing or whether it be his association with Ayers, who he said was a guy in the neighborhood when the fact is he launched his political career in Bill Ayers's living room," McCain said.

-- Anne E. Kornblut

GROUP UNDER SCRUTINY