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WASHINGTON - The gloves are officially off in the countdown to the American election as a struggling John McCain attempts to set the economic crisis aside and renew his once-successful attacks on Barack Obama's character and judgment.

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AP

Supporters reach out to shake the hand of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain at a rally in Albuquerque, N.M., Monday.

The Republican presidential candidate disputed Obama's assertion that McCain opposed regulation to avert the country's current economic crisis.

"I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed," McCain said Monday at a rally in New Mexico, unveiling his flailing campaign's new strategy by adding that Obama was "not exactly an open book."

McCain's running mate, self-described "pitbull with lipstick" Sarah Palin, once again accused Obama of hanging around with terrorists - though she started referring Monday to his onetime associate William Ayers as a "former terrorist."

The Democratic senator from Illinois used to do community work years ago with Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground. Obama long ago denounced Ayers for his radical background.

Palin also reminded Americans about Obama's links to the notorious Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a topic McCain had once deemed off-limits.

With just a month before the Nov. 4 vote, the Obama campaign wasted no time firing back - and their salvo was resonant of the current economic crisis that saw global stock markets plunge again on Monday.

The campaign released an Internet advertisement on Monday showcasing McCain's involvement in the so-called Keating Five scandal of 20 years ago that left 20,000 mostly elderly investors without their life savings.

"The Keating Five involved all the things that have brought the modern crisis," former bank regulator William Black says in the documentary-style ad. "Senator McCain has not learned the lesson, and has continued to follow policies that are going to produce a disaster."

The failure of California-based Lincoln Savings was, at the time, one of the largest financial failures in U.S. history.

In 1991, the Senate Ethics Committee cleared McCain of acting improperly but said he exercised "poor judgment." McCain himself has expressed regret about his attempts to get regulators to go easy on Charles Keating, company chairman.

The release of the Keating Five ad followed a weekend of assaults on Obama launched by the much-maligned Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee whose campaign was revitalized after a feisty debate performance against Senator Joe Biden.

In an interview in The New York Times published Monday, Palin spoke about Obama's relationship with Wright, his incendiary former pastor who once made anti-American comments.

"I don't know why that association isn't discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country," she said.

Obama and McCain square off tonight for their second presidential debate, this one a town-hall-style event in Tennessee that will feature them answering questions from the audience .