Obama Camp: "If people want to get down in the mud, we're prepared to get dirty"

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/10/07/obama_team_ready_for_mud.html

NASHVILLE -- Barack Obama's advisers are usually cautious about managing expectations -- never predicting a landslide, always downplaying how well their candidate will do in the debates. But with just a few hours until the second presidential debate here on Tuesday night, some of them let a little confidence slip.

Robert Gibbs, wandering the media filing tent, described McCain as "generally very cranky" these days. Then he asked: "Which John McCain are we going to get tonight? Are we going to get the guy who yells at the kids to get off his lawn?" Alternately, Gibbs said, a sunnier version of the Republican candidate could show.

But that was not the McCain he was most excited to talk about. "He looks angry and desperate, so I assume we'll get angry and desperate," Gibbs said, adding that if he wants to go negative -- presumably more difficult in the town hall setting, in front of several dozen undecided and soft-leaning voters -- Obama is ready to match him. "If people want to get down in the mud, we're prepared to get dirty," he said.