Candidates campaign in Midwest days before election

— -- The presidential candidates campaigned in the Midwest on Friday, hammering away at key issues just days before the election on Tuesday.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain was spending a second straight day touring economically ailing Ohio, a swing state with 20 electoral votes that McCain aides acknowledge is central to a victory on Tuesday. McCain was behind Democratic candidate Barack Obama in polls in the state.

Speaking in Hanoverton, Ohio, McCain acknowledged he's still down in the polls, but "we're coming back and we're coming back strong."

He also ripped into the "corruption" of Washington, D.C., alluding to the recent conviction of Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, for failing to report gifts.

"I will clean up this mess and make you proud again," he told the cheering crowd.

McCain is scheduled to end his tour early this evening in Columbus, Ohio, with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Another Republican political celebrity, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, appeared in Hanoverton and said McCain deserves to win for two reasons — lower taxes and "the security and defense of the United States of America."

The McCain campaign confirmed Friday that the senator will appear on Saturday Night Live this weekend. Hosting the show is actor Ben Affleck, an Obama supporter.

Obama was set to spend the day on a blitz across the Midwest, with his first stop back where his run began, in Des Moines, where he upset Hillary Rodham Clinton in the campaign's first contest.

"We started the campaign right here," he told the crowd at a noontime rally in unseasonably balmy weather in Des Moines. "We weren't given much of a chance by polls or pundits."

"But I knew the size of our challenge had outgrown the smallness of our politics," Obama added. "America's hungry for a new kind of politics."

Obama accused McCain of running a "slash and burn" campaign.

"He has spent the last few weeks calling me every name in the book," the Illinois senator said, speaking from a podium decorated with hay bales and Halloween pumpkins.