NEW YORK - As numbers emerged Friday showing U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama was benefiting most from early voting, Republican John McCain sought to take advantage of his Democratic rival's absence from the campaign trail by advancing twin pitches on taxes and security that his handlers say can win him back the momentum.
Obama was in Hawaii visiting his ailing grandmother as McCain, addressing a rally in Denver, Colo., entrenched messages that play off a pair of inopportune remarks made recently by Obama and his running mate, Senator Joe Biden.
As far back as the last debate between the two candidates, McCain has been evoking the plight of the Ohio journeyman known as Joe the Plumber, to whom Obama revealed his intention to "spread the wealth around" if he becomes president.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain speaks at a campaign rally at the Western Arena in Denver, Colorado on Friday.
This week, McCain has been pouncing on Biden's Sunday declaration that enemies of the United States would quickly "test" an Obama presidency by provoking a potentially destabilizing international incident.
McCain strategists believe reacting to these remarks gives the Republican his best hope of closing the huge poll lead Obama currently enjoys and prevailing on Nov. 4.
According to one senior advisor who spoke to reporters on McCain's campaign plane, of greatest concern to voters is the idea Obama is "so liberal."
"As Joe the Plumber and small business owners across the country have now reminded us all, America didn't become the greatest nation on earth by giving our money to the government to 'spread the wealth around'," McCain said in Denver as he evoked Obama's encounter with Samuel J. Warzelbacher of Holland, Ohio.
On the security question, he said he would "not be a president that needs to be tested," citing his military experience to show how he has already been tested.
McCain strategists feel the twin messages are responsible for the slight reduction in Obama's lead in the latest polls.
Among a new sheaf of polls Friday from Quinnipiac University in important "swing" states, Obama's eight-percentage-point lead Oct. 1 in Florida has been reduced to five percentage points. In Pennsylvania, it declined from 15 percentage points to 13. In Ohio, however, McCain lost ground over the same period, as Obama expanded his lead from eight percentage points to 14.
McCain famously demonstrated during the primaries he's capable of making a comeback, as he defied pundits' predictions he was finished by winning in New Hampshire after shunning the early Iowa caucuses.
But he's now faced with the difficulty of representing the party that has occupied the White House for eight years at a time plunging stock markets (there was a new global cascade Friday) have placed forecasts of a U.S. recession in high relief.
What's more, McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, was also forced to break off from the campaign trail Friday - though the reason for her absence contrasted sharply with Obama's.
Palin and her husband, Todd, were scheduled to be grilled in a second inquiry into her alleged abuse of power as Governor of Alaska.
Palin is accused of violating ethics rules when she fired the state's top law enforcement official, Walt Monegan, who says he got the boot because he refused to fire her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, who the Palins said was threatening the family.
The McCain campaign Friday also faced additional questioning over Palin's $150,000 makeover in clothes, accessories and hairstyling - spending that contrasts with McCain's current push for working-class support and Palin's projected image as an ordinary Alaska citizen who grew up hunting moose with her father.
"Governor Palin did not ask for or want any new clothes," said Nicolle Wallace, a senior McCain advisor.
"About a third of them have been returned, a third of them sit in the belly of the plane and are available to her and her family for special campaign events, TV appearances and ad filming, (and) another third was made available to her family for the public events during convention week."
It emerged Friday that Obama has the edge in seven of nine states that collect party registration and demographic data on early voting as Democrats, African Americans and first-time voters cast ballots in unprecedented numbers.
Obama received the endorsement Friday of the editorially liberal-leaning New York Times, which had endorsed Hillary Clinton during the primaries for the Democratic nomination, and McCain for the Republican nomination.
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