Leading in election polls, Obama is playing it safe

Leading in election polls, Obama is playing it safe

COLUMBUS — Leading in polls with 25 days to the election, Democrat Barack Obama is playing it safe, offering careful proposals to address the economic crisis while letting allies respond to John McCain’s sharpest charges.

The Democratic presidential nominee, famous for his unscripted oratory, now reads his speeches from TelePrompTers, reducing the chance of gaffes. He has not taken questions from traveling reporters in two weeks, although he has done several interviews with national and local reporters.

He now refers to Republican John McCain as “my opponent” more often than by name. And he offers carefully limited, comparatively noncontroversial remedies for the nation’s financial crisis.

Publicly, Obama’s aides say he keeps a calm demeanor and measured tone because he doesn’t want to fuel the anguish and panic caused by the economic meltdown. Privately, they acknowledge there is no desire to shake up a campaign dynamic that is inching him closer to the White House.

“I don’t like to yell,” Obama told more than 10,000 people in Columbus on Friday, his fifth large rally in hotly contested Ohio in two days. He was referring to a sound-system glitch, but it could have been a metaphor for strategy.

“He’s responding just right, and the polls are reflecting it,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who campaigned with Obama this week and helped lead the counterattacks against McCain. When GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin spoke in Ohio on Thursday, Brown said, she spent too much time on issues such as Obama’s ties to Vietnam War-era radical William Ayers, now a college professor in Chicago.

McCain tries to temper anger at GOP rallies

LAKEVILLE, Minn. (AP) — The anger is getting raw at Republican rallies and John McCain is finally acting to tamp it down.

McCain was booed by his own supporters Friday when, in an abrupt switch from raising questions about Barack Obama’s character, he described the Democrat as a “decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”

A sense of grievance spilling into rage has gripped some GOP events as McCain supporters see his presidential campaign lag against Barack Obama. They’re making it personal, against the Democrat. Shouts of “traitor,” “terrorist,” “treason,” “liar,” and even “off with his head” have rung from the crowd at McCain and Sarah Palin rallies and gone unchallenged by them.

Presidential candidates are accustomed to raucous rallies this close to Election Day and welcome the enthusiasm. But they are also traditionally monitors of sorts from the stage. Part of their job is to leaven proceedings if tempers run ragged and to rein in an out-of-bounds comment from the crowd.

Associated Press