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In the midst of a presidential election campaign that has become deeply personal and bitter, John McCain came out swinging Tuesday, accusing Barack Obama and his “cronies and his friends” of causing the current economic crisis.

The Republican presidential nominee maintained that his Democratic rival was responsible for the current economic emergency because he had allowed mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to back loans irresponsibly.

“There were some of us that stood up against it,” he maintained. “There were others who took a hike.”

And he claimed that “Senator Obama was the second-highest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac political contributions” in history.

The drumbeat of criticism from Mr. McCain was relentless through the night. “Senator Obama has never taken on the leaders of his party on a single issue. …He voted for every increase in spending that I saw come across the floor of the United States Senate. …Nailing down Senator Obama's tax proposals is like nailing Jell-O to a wall.”

And at one point he referred to Mr. Obama simply as “that one.”

Mr. Obama, in response, said the real root of the economic crisis was the deregulation of the financial-services sector, championed by Mr. McCain, which led to abuses by banks and insurance companies.

But while he also had his share of criticism for his rival, Mr. Obama told one questioner that “you're not interested in hearing politicians pointing fingers. What you're interested in is trying to figure out how is this going to impact you.”

Mr. McCain also had a surprise in store: an audacious and massively expensive proposal to have the Treasury buy up the mortgages of people threatened with losing their homes.

“Is it expensive? Yes,” the Republican acknowledged. But “until we stabilize home values in America, we're never going to start turning around and creating jobs and fixing our economy. … And it's my proposal, it's not Senator Obama's proposal and it's not President Bush's proposal.”

The town-hall format of the debate, in which audience members asked questions and veteran NBC journalist Tom Brokaw read questions from e-mailers, prevented what might have been an even more acerbic contest between the two.

But out on the campaign trail, things are getting truly dark. Consistently behind in the polls, and in trouble in every single battleground state, the McCain campaign has launched attacks on Mr. Obama's character and judgment, claiming he consorts with former radical William Ayers, whom it describes as a domestic terrorist.

The Obama campaign responded by releasing a 13-minute documentary on YouTube that had clearly been prepared well in advance detailing Mr. McCain's ties to Charles Keating, a savings-and-loan executive who went to jail in the 1990s for misusing his depositors' money.

New polls show that Mr. Obama has entrenched his lead over Mr. McCain among voters. The Rasmussen and Gallup daily tracking polls show Mr. Obama enjoying 51 or 52 per cent of support among voters. Mr. McCain is in the low 40s, giving Mr. Obama a lead of about eight points.

Other polls, however, show the race much closer. The RealClearPolitics aggregate puts Mr. Obama's lead at 5.5 percentage points.

The reason for the swing is simple enough: Voters are blaming the Republicans for the economic terror that it feels as though the country is living through.

To take peoples' minds off their troubles, Mr. McCain decided to change the electoral subject, questioning Mr. Obama's judgment in the people he associates with.

Last night, Mr. Obama tried to keep the focus of the debate on the economy, which wasn't hard, since many of the questions concerned the crisis and how government should respond to it.

To the extent that talking about the economy benefits Democrats over Republicans, the debate rebounded to his advantage. He also managed the town-hall format, of which Mr. McCain is a master, with equal dexterity.

The candidates will have at it once more, Oct. 15, at Hofstra University in New York.