Obama and McCain switch focus to economy
America was bombarded with new television adverts from its presidential candidates today, both promising to end the economic meltdown.
Democrat Barack Obama offered bipartisan unity to stem the downward spiral, while Republican John McCain repeated his vow to reform Wall Street.
In the hours after the Bush administration injected $85bn to prop up American International Group, one of the world’s largest insurance companies, both campaigns scrambled to produce messages to reassure shaken voters - declaring their candidate was best suited to fix the badly wounded economy.
Even before the nightmarish financial news of Monday – as stock markets around the world plummeted on news that bank Lehman Brothers was filing for bankruptcy - polls showed Americans were consumed with financial concerns above all other issues facing voters in this presidential election year.
Mr McCain, who had been riding a wave of enthusiasm over his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate, has stumbled and been forced back on the defensive by his muddled response to the bad economic news this week.
The early morning release of his latest ad and its rapid production – it was taped during a 10-minute stop at a home in Tampa, Florida, on Tuesday - highlight Mr McCain’s efforts to reclaim the offensive on a subject he has acknowledged is a weakness.
“Enough is enough,” says the commercial. “I’ll meet this financial crisis head on. Reform Wall Street. New rules for fairness and honesty. I won’t tolerate a system that puts you and your family at risk. Your savings, your jobs - I’ll keep them safe.”
Mr Obama was buying an extraordinarily long two minutes of television time to air his lengthy commercial. In it he says: “600,000 Americans have lost their jobs since January. Paychecks are flat and home values are falling. It’s hard to pay for gas and groceries and if you put it on a credit card they’ve probably raised your rates.
“You’re paying more than ever for health insurance that covers less and less. This isn’t just a string of bad luck. The truth is that while you’ve been living up to your responsibilities, Washington has not. That’s why we need change. Real change.”
While declaring there was no easy solution to the deep troubles facing the United States, Mr Obama said he “approved this message because bitter, partisan fights and outworn ideas of the left and the right won’t solve the problems we face today. But a new spirit of unity and shared responsibility will.”
Yesterday Mr McCain called for an economic crisis commission comparable to the one that investigation the September 11 terrorist attacks, while Mr Obama laughed that off as “the oldest Washington stunt in the book.”
“This isn’t 9/11,” Mr Obama told a crowd of more than 2,000 at the Colorado School of Mines, dismissing the idea of a need for study. “We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I’ll provide it. John McCain won’t.”
Campaigning in Florida, Mr McCain promised reforms to expose and end the “reckless conduct, corruption and unbridled greed” that he said had caused the financial crisis on Wall Street.
But his calls for greater market regulation were running up against his record as a proponent of deregulation and playing into Mr Obama’s drive to link Mr McCain with the deeply unpopular President George Bush, a fellow Republican who is widely blamed for America’s worst economic downturn in at least a generation.
Mr Obama said the nation faced “the most serious financial situation in generations” and declared Mr McCain and Mr Bush jointly “support ideological policies that made the crisis more likely, do nothing as the crisis hits and then scramble as the whole thing collapses.”
Events this week were “the final verdict on an economic philosophy that has completely failed,” Mr Obama said.
But Mr McCain forged onward with his new campaign strategy that claims he, not Mr Obama, would be the needed new broom to bring change to Washington.
