(This segment aired Friday on MSNBC) Andrea Mitchell questions McCain's economic advisor---Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Director of the Congressional Budget Office and current chief McCain economic advisor on the personal attack smear ads they are running against Obama which include making William Daley a convict.
Mitchell: Do you feel comfortable with that attack on William Daley?
In fact Bill Daley says he went to a Sen. McCain event recently and got a autographed picture from Senator McCain. What is this implication?
Eakins: Why does the standard doesn't apply to Sen Obama who on a daily basis attacks John McCain's staff as riddled with lobbyists. Ah, if Sen Obama is comfortable with mischaracterizing the relationship with John McCain and the aides that served him so faithfully, why is Sen. Obama not held to the same standard?....All we're asking is that he solve a problem that he has started.
Mitchell: I'm not quite sure of what you're saying because it seems to be that you're saying Sen. Obama has done this therefore it's OK to do that. I'm not even acknowledging what the charge is to Sen Obama, but I still don't understand the sort of guilt by association tactic and whether you as an economist and as a former economic official think that this is the way that he should be going.
Mayor Richard Daley is very upset over the fact that McCain used his brother in the ad.
"You want to get tough in politics, I can get tough in politics as anyone else," Daley said. "When you start throwing mud, mud is going to be thrown at you and it’s going to be sticky.”
"People get desperate in their political life," the mayor said when asked about the ad. "My theory about politics and government: You build yourself up. You don’t have to tear people down."
Daley also warned that McCain has his own vulnerabilities, noting the Arizona senator's involvement in the "Keating Five" influence peddling scandal that involved his ties to banker Charles Keating Jr., a poster boy for the savings and loan meltdown.
"If people start throwing dirt and mud – remember, it comes back and hits you right in the face," the mayor said. "I think, to put my brother Bill there – they want to put me there, fine, they put me there all the time anyway."
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Asked if he is suggesting a Keating Five ad, Daley shot back: “It would be a great ad. People lost their life savings. Life savings, their own homes, for a guy named Keating out of Arizona.
