Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama and John McCain will take their long-distance name-calling to a more intimate, and perhaps awkward, setting tonight: a close-quarters, town-hall debate.

The presidential candidates will be seated six feet apart, on a horseshoe-shaped stage in Nashville, Tennessee, as the campaign grows increasingly tense and personal. Both nominees pledge to stay on offense during their second face-to-face debate, which could make for uncomfortable political theater, said Alan Schroeder, author of ``Presidential Debates: 50 Years of High-Risk TV.''

``It seems to me that the aggressive tone isn't very suitable for the town-hall debate,'' Schroeder said. ``The nature of the town hall is the candidates have to be responsive to the citizens,'' who are more interested in ``legitimate issues,'' than the ``the fighting between the two campaigns.''

McCain, 72, will try to leaven his attacks with humor, said Republican campaign aides, some of whom plan to wear cufflinks with a mock Obama presidential seal. McCain and his surrogates will be ``aggressive truth tellers'' on debate night, said senior adviser Nicolle Wallace. ``I don't accept the premise that that makes the campaign negative.''

Obama, 47, is prepared to return fire. ``Our first thing is always to talk about the issues,'' said Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to the Democratic nominee. ``But if we need to counterpunch, we're certainly prepared.''

Undecided Voters

Moderated by NBC News's Tom Brokaw at Belmont University in Nashville, the 90-minute session will cover questions from an audience of 80 undecided Tennessee voters. Brokaw, interim moderator of NBC's ``Meet the Press,'' will try to limit the candidates' responses to two minutes and keep the discussion on- subject.

That could be difficult. Since the weekend, McCain's vice presidential running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, has criticized Obama for his association with William Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground radical group. She said Obama is someone who would ``pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country.'' Obama once served on a charity board with Ayers, and has denounced the bombings by the Weather Underground, which took place when Obama was a child.

The Obama campaign hit back by launching a Web site about McCain's relationship with former savings-and-loan executive Charles Keating during the 1980s S&L collapse.

Harsh Rhetoric

McCain responded yesterday by unleashing some of his harshest lines about Obama to date. At a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, McCain criticized Obama's ``touchiness'' and said the Illinois senator ``will try to distract you from noticing that he never answers the serious and legitimate questions he has been asked.''

With less than a month before Election Day and Obama's support in opinion polls rising amid a financial crisis, both sides are seeking leverage.

The Democratic presidential candidate is trying to draw parallels between the current market turmoil and McCain's role in the savings-and-loan scandal. McCain's campaign, meanwhile, is focusing on raising questions about Obama's character, questioning his personal associations with Ayers and with Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

So far, McCain has left the Ayers charge to his running mate, though his campaign didn't rule out the possibility that McCain might raise the topic during the debate. ``We'll just see what the questioning is,'' Wallace said.

Punching Back

If McCain mentions Ayers, Wright or Obama's ties to real estate developer Tony Rezko, who was convicted of fraud, Obama's campaign says the Illinois senator will likely respond by talking about McCain's role in the so-called Keating Five.

``We're not going to get into the boxing ring with a guy that's going to throw punches and not throw punches back,'' Gibbs said. ``If these guys want to talk about relationships, we're more than prepared to do that.''

Obama's advisers have been preparing to criticize McCain's involvement with Keating since at least late September. The domain name for keatingeconomics.com, the site launched by Obama's campaign to show a video about McCain and Keating, was created on September 25, according to GoDaddy.com.

``It's a 13-minute documentary, so it's been in the works for a while,'' said Gibbs. ``But look, we're going to fight fire with fire.''

Keating Five

The so-called Keating Five included McCain, who was in his first term in the Senate representing Arizona, and four Democratic senators, none of whom are still in office. They faced accusations of improperly intervening with federal regulators on behalf of Keating, an Arizona businessman who was chairman of Lincoln Savings & Loan Association.

The Senate Ethics Committee ultimately found that McCain had ``exercised poor judgment'' and cleared him of wrongdoing. In his book ``Worth the Fighting For,'' McCain wrote that his decision to meet with regulators on Keating's behalf was ``the worst mistake of my life'' and that he had learned from the experience.

Trailing in every recent national poll, McCain heads into the debate with more ground to cover. ``With McCain's challenge getting tougher and tougher each day, the potential effectiveness of attacks by McCain gets less,'' said Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington. ``We're getting to the point when a campaign event isn't likely to alter the trajectory of the race.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Hans Nichols in Nashville at hnichols2@bloomberg.net; Julianna Goldman in Asheville, North Carolina, at jgoldman6@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 7, 2008 00:28 EDT