Cedar Rapids, Iowa ? Sen. John McCain’s campaign accused Sen. Barack Obama of playing the “race card” on Thursday, a day after the Democrat said his opponent and other Republicans would try to scare voters by pointing to Obama’s “funny name” and the fact that “he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills.”

The charge was the first time the campaigns had directly confronted the subject of race. Although both sides have sought to avoid raising the thorny issue, the back-and-forth showed that it was perhaps inevitable the topic would emerge in a campaign in which a black candidate is headed for a major-party nomination for the first time.

The exchange was reminiscent of several flare-ups over race during the Democratic primaries, when the Obama campaign complained about comments made by Bill Clinton in support of the candidacy of his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton.

The former president responded by accusing the Obama campaign of “feeding” the news media to keep the issue of race alive. Obama also tackled the issue in a major speech in Philadelphia to quell controversy over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., his former pastor, who accused the U.S. government of conspiring against blacks.

The McCain campaign’s charge comes in a week in which it has launched a series of increasingly harsh attacks against Obama, accusing the Democrat of turning his back on wounded troops and being an arrogant, out-of-touch celebrity who does not appreciate the problems of average Americans.

McCain aides said they were driven to raise the race issue after three Obama appearances Wednesday in Missouri, in which the Democrat took on McCain’s recent aggressiveness and alluded to remarks about his name and looks that McCain campaign officials said have never been uttered.

“Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck,” McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said in a statement. “It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”

E-mails making false charges against Obama have circulated for months, but there is no evidence that McCain’s campaign has been behind them.

Obama aides said the candidate’s remarks were no different from applause lines he has used for months. But Obama did appear to expand upon the theme by linking the attacks to McCain by name. Asked what specifically Obama was referring to, campaign manager David Plouffe avoided the question, saying, “What we’re seeing out of the McCain campaign, the Republican Party and some of their allies have been some very aggressive charges.”

Obama strategist Robert Gibbs said separately, “Barack Obama in no way believes that the McCain campaign is using race as an issue, but he does believe they’re using the same old low-road politics to distract voters from the real issues in this campaign, and those are the issues he’ll continue to talk about.”

McCain aides acknowledged that Obama has leveled similar accusations for some time, but they said the insinuations that McCain himself was a party to racism required a response.