St. Louis - Political custom demands that before every presidential debate, campaign aides must spend much time and energy "raising expectations" for their opponent. They will go on about how masterly a debater the opponent is, so as to fatten him or her up for a post-debate skewering (while hailing their own candidate as a genius-slayer).

Senator Barack Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, was providing this valuable service to reporters a few hours before Senator Joseph Biden's meeting with Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska on Thursday. "She is a great, great debater," Mr. Plouffe was insisting in the aisle of Mr. Biden's campaign plane. He added that "Governor Palin is one of the best debaters in American politics," at which point several of the reporters burst out laughing.

"No, really," he pleaded, and one reporter asked Mr. Plouffe if he was sure he meant just "American" politics and not "the whole of world politics" - or maybe even "the history of all recorded human engagement."

"She is Cicero in the Snow," quipped Mr. Biden's press secretary, David Wade, as the gathering broke up.

This expectation-setting exercise was striking for its self-parody, because it's hard to think of a presidential or vice-presidential candidate who entered a debate with lower expectations than Ms. Palin did on Thursday.

Clips from her recent serial interview with Katie Couric, particularly one featuring her assertion that Alaska's proximity to Russia bolstered her foreign policy experience, fast became YouTube classics. Her performance in the interview sparked serious heebie-jeebies among Republicans and led the McCain campaign to sequester her for intensive debate prep at the McCain home near Sedona, Ariz. It also provided early trick-or-treating for the late-night comedians.

Noting that Ms. Palin was "getting ready" for the debate in Arizona, Jay Leno said, "I understand she knows all three branches of government now." Being in Arizona "really helped her on foreign policy," David Letterman said the same night, "because from Arizona she can see Mexico."

Her actual performance in the debate, then, was evaluated in the light of those expectations. She received quite a few good reviews, yes, but many of them keyed off her low bar ("Sarah Palin was supposed to fall off the stage," began an assessment in The Politico by Roger Simon, who gave Ms. Palin favorable marks).

Ms. Palin's brutal predebate period had threatened to banish her to that cruelest of fates in public life, the permanent punch line.

"There are certain people who once they become joke topics, they are forever joke topics," said Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University. According to Mr. Lichter, since Mr. McCain picked Ms. Palin to be his running mate on Aug. 29 until the debate, Mr. Leno and Mr. Letterman made her the butt of 180 jokes - or more than the other three principals on the two tickets combined in that period (16 jokes for Mr. Biden; 26 for Mr. Obama; and 106 for Mr. McCain). About a third of the Palin jokes came in the three days preceding the debate as damage grew from the Couric interview.

Of course, every nationally known politician will come under some late-night lampooning if they stick around long enough. Like all modern presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have sparked thousands of jokes. They often involve easily mocked assumptions (that, say, Mr. Clinton has uncontrolled appetites, or Mr. Bush is dumb), and will be counterbalanced by the serious news that all presidents make. In other words, presidents are inevitably caricatured but not totally defined by their comic canon-fodder value.

Likewise, it's important to differentiate between politicians who can live peacefully with (if not embrace) those things for which they are parodied. For instance, few public figures have been spoofed as vigorously as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Everything from her suspected ambition to her laugh has been fair game. Yet few would dismiss her as anything less than formidable. She's hardly defined by her foibles. In her presidential campaign, she did a fair job of getting in on the joke, laughing at herself in several settings and appearing with some of her top teasing tormenters (like Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" and Amy Poehler on "Saturday Night Live").

New-on-the-scene politicians are more prone to being overtaken by their parodies.

"Vice presidents can be particularly vulnerable," said Mr. Lichter, who mentions Vice President Dan Quayle as one who never fully recovered from the mockery that greeted his debut in 1988. It can also extend to running mates, like Adm. James Stockdale, Ross Perot's No. 2, who today is better remembered for his doddering debate performance in 1992 than his heroic career. Politicians at the center of sex scandals enter a particularly unforgiving punch-line purgatory. (You think Mr. Stewart or Conan O'Brien are ever going to talk about John Edwards, Gary Hart or Eliot Spitzer for their policy ideas?)

On the other hand, Vice President Dick Cheney has provided a lifetime supply of heart-attack and hunting-accident humor (such fun genres!), but will clearly go down as a serious, contentious and multidimensional figure in history. "There is a tipping point that politicians reach," said Bob Orben, who was head of White House speechwriting for Gerald R. Ford before writing comedy for the likes of Red Skelton and Dick Gregory.

Mr. Orben refers to America's "comedy establishment," which he said was much more powerful today than it was in Mr. Ford's day. "You only had to overcome Johnny Carson back then," he said, and "Saturday Night Live," too (Chevy Chase's portrayal of Mr. Ford as physically clumsy marked the reputation of Mr. Ford, a former college football player, forever).

Television comedians abound now, deal heavily in politics, and serve as a primary news source for many voters, particularly young ones. Jokes and monologues are disseminated live on TV and TiVo, gathered on Web sites, circulated by e-mail.

"Now, once popular culture gets a hold of you, your reputation can become a joke very, very fast," said Mike Brown, the former head of FEMA, who of course knows this painfully. Widely blamed for the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Brown is something of a model for how permanent punch lines are made (resist "perfect storm" metaphor). He made his debut unsteadily on television and provided a rare bulls-eye for comic relief during an otherwise tragic circumstance. ("The most important evacuation was made today in New Orleans," Mr. Leno said at the time. "They got the head of FEMA, Mike Brown, out of there.")

Comics love fresh moose-kill. "Sarah Palin is so great because she brings in the potential for so many new kinds of jokes," Mr. Lichter said. "You don't have to do the same 'Bush is stupid,' 'Clinton is fat' or 'McCain is old' jokes," he said. "You can do something on how she is perky and attractive, or the lipstick on a pig line or whatever. You can almost feel her regenerating the comedy writers."

Ms. Palin also has the distinct advantage - or disadvantage - of looking a lot like "Saturday Night Live's" Tina Fey, which saddled her with an instant association with someone who is not to be taken seriously.

"Tina Fey was the first thing people thought of, which was not going to be good for her," said Mr. Orben. To wit, Mr. Letterman previewed Ms. Palin's debate performance with a Top 10 list of "Things Overheard at Palin Debate Camp" on Wednesday night.

Number One: "Any way we can just get Tina Fey to do it?"

Still, few were willing to declare that Ms. Palin had reached the point of no return. Before the debate, there was a certain amount of bipartisan support for the idea that she could redeem herself with a good performance.

"She might be reaching a point of self-caricature, but she can bring it all back tonight," said Ed Rendell, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, outside the Washington University debate hall.

And to some eyes, she did just that.

Ramesh Ponnuru, a columnist for the conservative National Review, called her the big winner on Thursday and, more to the point, declared: "The big loser tonight was Tina Fey."

By Mark Leibovich, The New York Times, October 4, 2008

SEDONA, Ariz. - Stepping up the Republican ticket's attacks on Senator Barack Obama, Gov. Sarah Palin on Saturday seized on a report about Mr. Obama's relationship with a former 1960s radical to accuse him of "palling around with terrorists."

"This is not a man who sees America as you see it, and how I see America," Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, said in Colorado, according to a pool report. "We see America as the greatest force for good in this world. If we can be that beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy and can live in a country that would allow intolerance in the equal rights that again our military men and women fight for and die for all of us.

"Our opponent though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

The article to which she referred, in The New York Times on Saturday, traced Mr. Obama's sporadic interactions with Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weathermen who later became an education professor in Chicago and worked on education projects there with Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee for president.

The article said: "A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers."

Ms. Palin seized on their relationship after the campaign of Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, said it planned to shift its strategy and try to turn the campaign into a referendum on Mr. Obama.

"Well, I was reading my copy of today's New York Times and I was interested to read about Barack's friends from Chicago," Ms. Palin said at the fund-raiser in Englewood, Colo. "Turns out one of Barack's earliest supporters is a man who, according to The New York Times, and they are hardly ever wrong, was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol. Wow. These are the same guys who think patriotism is paying higher taxes."

The Obama campaign responded by noting that McCain officials had been quoted as saying that they hoped to "turn the page" on the fiscal crisis, which has hurt Mr. McCain's standing in the polls, and to devote more time to attacking Mr. Obama.

"Governor Palin's comments, while offensive, are not surprising, given the McCain campaign's statement this morning that they would be launching Swift-boat-like attacks in hopes of deflecting attention from the nation's economic ills," said Hari Sevugan, an Obama spokesman. "What's clear is that John McCain and Sarah Palin would rather spend their time tearing down Barack Obama than laying out a plan to build up our economy."

By Michael Cooper, The New York Times, October 4, 2008

The turmoil on Wall Street and the weakening economy are changing the contours of the presidential campaign map, giving new force to Senator Barack Obama's ambitious strategy to make incursions into Republican territory, while leading Senator John McCain to scale back his efforts to capture Democratic states.

Mr. Obama has what both sides describe as serious efforts under way in at least nine states that voted for President Bush in 2004, including some that neither side thought would be on the table this close to Election Day. In a visible sign of the breadth of Mr. Obama's aspirations, he is using North Carolina - a state that Mr. Bush won by 13 percentage points in 2004, and where Mr. Obama is now spending heavily on advertisements - as his base to prepare this weekend for the debate on Tuesday.

By contrast, Mr. McCain is vigorously competing in just four states where Democrats won in 2004: Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, followed by Wisconsin and Minnesota. His decision last week to pull out of Michigan reflected in part the challenge that the declining economy has created for Republicans, given that they have held the White House for the last eight years.

But Mr. McCain's abrupt decision, which caught many members of his own party by surprise, also underlined the tactical political squeeze he finds himself in: by using his fund-raising advantage to compete in so many places, Mr. Obama has forced Mr. McCain to spend money to hold on in what had been viewed as safe Republican states, like Indiana and Missouri, while limiting Mr. McCain's ability to play offense on Democratic turf.

Mr. Obama now has a solid lead in states that account for 189 electoral votes, and he is well positioned in states representing 71 more electoral votes, for a total of 260, according to a tally by The New York Times, based on polls and interviews with officials from both campaigns and outside analysts. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Mr. McCain has solid leads in states with 160 electoral votes and is well positioned in states with another 40 electoral votes, according to the Times tally, for a total of 200. Just six states representing 78 electoral votes - Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia - are tossups.

Mr. Obama appears to have significantly more options to reach the 270 threshold, particularly if Mr. McCain fails to win any states that Democrats won in 2004, like Pennsylvania, where the Republican ticket has been competing especially vigorously.

That said, the margin in many of these states remains relatively tight, and the field could certainly shift again in the final weeks, as the presidential candidates engage in two more debates and as Mr. McCain steps up his attacks on Mr. Obama, as his aides said he planned to do.

Mr. McCain's advisers said their hope was that the issue of the economy would recede somewhat from the public consciousness, now that Congress has passed a bailout plan, and open the way to try to turn the contest back into a referendum on Mr. Obama's credentials. They argued that given everything that had happened, Mr. McCain remained in easy distance of Mr. Obama, evidence of what they said were underlying problems with his appeal.

"Senator Obama has more money than God, the most favorable political climate imaginable - a three-week Wall Street meltdown and financial crisis - and with all that, the most margin he can get is four points?" said Bill McInturff, one of Mr. McCain's pollsters. "That does speak to the questions there are about lack of experience, his candidacy, and other things that make people say, 'Gosh, is he really ready?' "

Mr. Obama in particular is moving to seize on what both sides think could be a decisive moment in this campaign, using Wall Street as a way to focus attention on related concerns, like Social Security and health care.

Campaigning on Saturday, Mr. Obama told several thousand supporters in Newport News, Va., that Mr. McCain's health care plan was outdated and had hidden tax increases that would erode companies' coverage for workers and leave millions of people uninsured.

He called it an "old Washington bait and switch," adding, "He gives you a tax credit with one hand but raises your taxes with the other."

Mr. Obama is now running advertisements aimed at elderly voters in South Florida, Las Vegas and Reno, Nev., invoking the Wall Street crisis in criticizing Mr. McCain's support for allowing individuals to choose to invest part of their payroll taxes in stocks and bonds as an alternative to Social Security. The advertisements assert that the approach will "gamble with your life savings." (That claim has been described by independent monitoring organizations as deceptive.)

In Florida, voters will begin receiving mailings from Mr. Obama on Monday warning about what they describe as a McCain plan to tax health care benefits "for the first time ever." A new advertisement released on Friday, using clips from the vice-presidential debate on Thursday night, makes the same attack on Mr. McCain. In Nevada, advertisements are geared toward the mortgage crisis in a state that has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country.

In Virginia, voters stung by fuel costs received a brochure saying, "While you're running on empty, Exxon made $4 billion in one month," pointing out that Mr. McCain promised tax breaks to oil companies. (The tax cuts are not specifically for oil companies but are part of a broader proposal to reduce corporate tax rates, including those for alternative energy companies.)

It is health care, advisers said, that they believe resonates more than other issues for Americans who are worried about their economic condition. It is a less-threatening way to talk about the economy - showing pictures of shuttered banks, for example, could create more worry - that aides said tested well across demographic groups, but particularly among older voters who have been slower to warm to Mr. Obama.

"One of the biggest economic anxieties that people have is the cost of health care," said Gov. James E. Doyle of Wisconsin, a Democrat in a state where Mr. McCain is making a strong challenge to Mr. Obama. "There is a great deal of uneasiness."

Mr. McCain's advisers said that more than anything, it was the bad economy in Michigan, staggered by declining sales of American-made automobiles, that convinced them they had no hope of winning a state that once had been high on their list of targets. Beyond that, they said the Wall Street downturn was hurting Mr. McCain in Florida - where the mortgage crisis has been particularly acute - a state where they were once confident that they could hold off Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama opted out of the federal campaign finance system, which limits spending to $84.1 million, in the belief that he would be able to raise far more than that and outspend Mr. McCain.

Mr. Obama has used his cash advantage both to expand the size of the campaign field - it seems a good bet that Mr. Obama would not be spending money in Missouri if he had an $84.1 million limit - but also to outspend Mr. McCain in battleground states. In Florida over the past two weeks, Mr. Obama has spent $5.3 million on television, compared with just under $1.1 million by Mr. McCain, said Evan Tracey, the head of CMAG, a company that monitors political advertising.

Mr. Tracey said Mr. Obama had been steadily increasing his national television advertising budget by 20 percent each week this fall.

Mr. Obama is making a sustained effort to capture from the Republican column Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. He is putting effort into Missouri and Montana, and though those seem like longer shots, Mr. McCain campaigned in Missouri last week, and Republicans are buying advertising time there.

"That is a lot of defense that John McCain is going to have to play," said David Plouffe, Mr. Obama's campaign manager.

Of the four Democratic states where Mr. McCain is competing, his aides said he viewed Pennsylvania - the biggest of them - as offering him the best chance. Mr. Obama lost the Democratic primary there to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Robert A. Gleason Jr., the state's Republican chairman, said that recent polls suggesting that Mr. Obama was building a lead were misleading, noting that the state was filled with the kind of blue-collar voters with whom Mr. Obama has struggled for much of the year to connect. "Obama is not catching on here," Mr. Gleason said.

Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, did not dispute Mr. Gleason's suggestion that Mr. Obama was not as strong in that state as some polls suggested. "I think they know they have catch-up to do here," Mr. Rendell said. "Senator McCain has been here 17 times since June."

Mr. Obama's campaign said that he had been there seven times since the end of the primary season, June 3.

Mr. Rendell said an unusually long one-minute advertisement Mr. Obama produced, which showed him talking directly into the camera about the economic crisis, was one reason polls were showing increasing strength for Mr. Obama in the state.

The McCain campaign's announcement that it was pulling out of Michigan - the kind of news that can be dispiriting to supporters and contributors - reflects the period the campaign has entered, when it is difficult if not impossible to do the kind of feints and bluffs about where the candidate is playing. (For a while, Mr. Obama's aides claimed he would be competing in Georgia and even spent some money there before pulling out over the summer.)

With limited time and money left, it now becomes quickly apparent when a candidate takes down his television advertisements or cancels a campaign trip, as Mr. McCain did to Michigan this week. Mr. McCain's associates said they put the news out on the day of the vice-presidential debate in hopes of minimizing attention to it, though inevitably, it fed the perception that Mr. McCain's campaign was going through a difficult stretch.

Yet in a sign of how closely contested the campaign remains, both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama have sent people and money into Maine and Nebraska, two states where electoral votes are split, to try to peel off a single electoral vote, with Mr. Obama hoping to pick up one in a particular region of Nebraska, which is otherwise reliably Republican, while Mr. McCain is trying the same thing in Maine, which has gone Democratic in recent presidential elections.

That is not a fanciful battle: There are plausible outcomes that would leave the two men with a 269-269 electoral vote tie, forcing the election into the House of Representatives.

Mr. McCain sent workers from Michigan to Maine, focusing specifically on the state's rural 2nd Congressional District. And Mr. Obama has added an office filled with organizers in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District, which includes Omaha, where a large voter registration drive has been under way for weeks.

"I think we've got a shot at that," Mr. Obama said in an interview in the summer about the Nebraska vote. "Wouldn't that be fun?"

By Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times, October 4, 2008

Gov. Sarah Palin made it through the vice-presidential debate on Thursday without doing any obvious damage to the Republican presidential ticket. By surviving her encounter with Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and quelling some of the talk about her basic qualifications for high office, she may even have done Senator John McCain a bit of good, freeing him to focus on the other troubles shadowing his campaign.

It was not a tipping point for the embattled Republican presidential ticket, the bad night that many Republicans had feared. But neither did it constitute the turning point the McCain campaign was looking for after a stretch of several weeks in which Senator Barack Obama seemed to be gaining the upper hand in the race. Even if he no longer has to be on the defensive about Ms. Palin, Mr. McCain still faces a tough environment with barely a month until the election, as he acknowledged hours before the debate by effectively pulling his campaign out of Michigan, a Democratic state where Mr. McCain's advisers had once been optimistic of victory.

"This is going to help stop the bleeding," said Todd Harris, a Republican consultant who worked for Mr. McCain in his first presidential campaign. "But this alone won't change the trend line, particularly in some of the battleground states."

Short of a complete bravura performance that would have been tough for even the most experienced national politician to turn in - or a devastating error by the mistake-prone Mr. Biden, who instead turned in an impressively sharp performance - there might have been little Ms. Palin could have done to help Mr. McCain.

The McCain campaign has grimly confronted a series of polls since the presidential debate last week showing Mr. Obama gaining a lead not only nationally, but in swing states. The significance of Mr. Obama's huge financial advantage has become clear as he has forced Mr. McCain to fight in what should be Republican states, like Missouri, and thus make the kind of triage decisions like the one he made in Michigan.

The economic problems on Wall Street have posed a severe problem for Mr. McCain, moving the presidential debate to precisely the ground that favors Democrats, and Mr. Biden sought repeatedly during the debate to lay the problem at the doorstep of the Republican Party. And even if a financial rescue plan is approved by Congress, there is no reason to think that the bad economic news is going to stop: with reports of bleak unemployment numbers, more gyrations of the stock market, and the prospect of bad economic reports on everything from job losses to automobile sales.

"For more than a year, people assumed that if Obama was the Democratic nominee, the campaign would be a referendum on him," Mr. Harris said. "The economic crisis changed that: the campaign is now a referendum on who can get us out of this mess. One of the challenges for the McCain campaign is going to be turn the race back into an up-or-down referendum on Obama."

And through this period - easily the worst one Mr. McCain has faced since he was forced to lay off most of his campaign staff more than a year ago when he ran out of money - Mr. McCain has appeared off balance. He has been searching for a message and a way to make a case against Mr. Obama, and often publicly venting his frustration at the way the campaign is going, as he did this week in a contentious meeting with the editorial board of The Des Moines Register.

Ms. Palin can presumably claim two victories, though modest ones. She did not offer a reprise of the unsteady responses that marked her interviews with Katie Couric on CBS News, even if many of her answers were not always responsive to the question, particularly when contrasted with Mr. Biden. Her performance - feisty and spirited - also might have heartened conservatives, many of whom had gone from ecstasy to despair in the period from when she was named until this week.

"Her performance re-energizes the conservative base," said Nelson Warfield, a conservative Republican consultant. "Palin pierced the media's low expectations."

Mr. McCain has had difficulty in recent weeks trying to make effective attacks on Mr. Obama.

A more conventional vice-presidential candidate could have used the platform of the debate on Thursday to go after Mr. Obama and turn this night into a referendum on Mr. Obama. And Ms. Palin certainly tried, attacking Mr. Obama repeatedly for his views on national security, and taxes, prompting equally passionate rebuttals from Mr. Biden.

But she had become such an outsized figure since her explosive introduction to the country by Mr. McCain that the story of this debate was always going to be about Ms. Palin, and not Mr. Obama. It seems fair to say that Americans who tuned in to this debate watched to get their impression of Ms. Palin, and not to hear what she had to say about Mr. Obama.

Election Day is now just a month away, and if this presidential race follows typical patterns, people are now making decisions - and, again if this election is true to form, they will be making their choice between the two people at the top of the ticket. Matthew Dowd, who was chief strategist for President Bush in 2004, recalled when he was working for Senator Lloyd Bentsen, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1988, when he - by every account - beat Dan Quayle in that vice-presidential debate.

"We were sitting in the audience, I was sitting between Al Gore and Dick Gephardt, and everyone was like 'Oh that's, great, great,' " Mr. Dowd said. "But it didn't matter anymore. You're 30 days or so out and people are starting to look at the presidential candidates. The race had formed."

"You're in a race right now that is beginning to solidify into a five- or six-point Barack Obama lead," he said. "And each day forward with lead holding is not a good day for McCain. It doesn't contribute to what they really need to do. They have just a little over 30 days to start to make up some serious ground, at a time when people are already starting to vote."

That, Mr. Dowd said, was why an adequate performance from Ms. Palin Thursday night fell short of what Mr. McCain needed and will probably be forgotten before the presidential candidates meet for their second debate next Tuesday in Nashville.

By Adam Nagourney, The New York Times, October 3, 2008

Gov. Sarah Palin used a steady grin, folksy manner and carefully scripted talking points to punch politely and persist politically at the vice-presidential debate on Thursday night, turning in a performance that her rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., sought to undermine with cordially delivered but pointed criticism.

If the issues and positions were familiar to many viewers - on taxes and the economy, energy and oil, same sex marriage, Iraq and Afghanistan - it was Ms. Palin's debut in a nationally televised debate that made for unusual theater. And Ms. Palin, a former small-town mayor, was unlike any other running mate in recent memory, using phrases like "heck of a lot" and "Main Streeters like me" to appeal to working-class and middle-class voters who feel abandoned by Washington.

Mr. Biden, a six-term senator who has twice sought the presidency, remained forceful and composed against an opponent who proved difficult to attack, given that she is a newcomer and a woman in an arena long dominated by men.

Focusing his attacks on the Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, Mr. Biden only occasionally lost patience with Ms. Palin's debating tactics, as when she used Mr. Biden's words against him.

In the only vice-presidential debate of the campaign, at Washington University in St. Louis, Ms. Palin exceeded expectations in this highly anticipated face-off, though those expectations were low after she had stumbled in recent television interviews. She succeeded by not failing in any obvious way. She mostly reverted to and repeated talking points, like referring to Mr. McCain as a "maverick" and the Republican ticket as a "team of mavericks," while not necessarily quelling doubts among voters about her depth of knowledge.

Instead Ms. Palin emphasized her down-home qualities and her membership in the middle class, a group that she and Mr. Biden sparred over repeatedly during their 90-minute encounter.

"Go to a kids' soccer game on Saturday and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, 'How are you feeling about the economy?' " Ms. Palin said. "And I'll betcha you're going to hear some fear in that parent's voice, fear regarding the few investments that some of us have in the stock market - did we just take a major hit with those investments?"

Mr. Biden, standing at a lectern a few feet from Ms. Palin's, replied with one of his characteristic strategies in the debate: portraying Mr. McCain as unaware or unmoved by voters' problems and as an ally of the deeply unpopular President Bush.

"It was two Mondays ago John McCain said at 9 o'clock in the morning that the fundamentals of the economy were strong," Mr. Biden said. "Eleven o'clock that same day, two Mondays ago, John McCain said that we have an economic crisis. That doesn't make John McCain a bad guy, but it does point out he's out of touch. Those folks on the sidelines knew that two months ago."

Rarely has a vice-presidential showdown been packed with such political importance. Ms. Palin's unsteady performances in recent interviews turned this debate into can't-miss television, but they have also raised questions - from conservatives, among others - about the soundness of Mr. McCain's judgment in picking a relative newcomer as his running mate. Recent polls have suggested that his shifting statements on the economic bailout talks in Washington have not reassured some of these conservatives, raising the stakes for Ms. Palin to deliver steady, informed answers and repartee in the debate.

Mr. Biden's aides had their own concerns before the debate, worrying that a single gaffe by him could shift the onus off Ms. Palin. They worried that even the slightest miscalibration of his tone, body language and mien could imply condescension or worse toward Ms. Palin and become the story of the night.

With both candidates keeping their cool and addressing each other politely with honorifics - Mr. Biden said "Sarah Palin" at one point and then correct himself with "Governor Palin" - there was a certain symmetry to the debate.

Both candidates have a son preparing to serve in Iraq. Every time Mr. Biden seemed to criticize Mr. Bush, Ms. Palin would mention "mavericks." And when Mr. Biden criticized the Bush administration at one point, Ms. Palin replied: "Say it ain't so, Joe. There you go again, pointing backwards again."

The two candidates have both faced personal challenges, too: Ms. Palin's baby son has Down syndrome, while Mr. Biden, in the 1970s, lost his wife and daughter in a car accident. As he recalled that time and the near-death of one of his sons, Mr. Biden briefly choked up - the one moment of raw emotion in an otherwise stable debate between two fairly disciplined candidates.

"The notion that, somehow, because I'm a man, I don't know what it's like to raise two kids alone, I don't know what it's like to have a child you're not sure is going to make it," Mr. Biden said. "I understand as well as, with all due respect, the governor or anybody else, what it's like for those people sitting around that kitchen table. And guess what? They're looking for help."

The extraordinary interest in Ms. Palin's performance elevated the debate into nothing less than a cultural event. Viewers flocked to their Facebook and MySpace pages to critique her answers, her poise and even her hair; others lamented Senator Barack Obama's choice of Mr. Biden instead of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, an agile debater who could go gender-to-gender against Ms. Palin. Even a "Palin Bingo" card was in circulation on the Internet, with participants told to check off trademark words of Ms. Palin's when she uttered them, like "bad guys," "pro-life" and "mayor."

If Ms. Palin suffered in rapid-fire news media interviews in which she was the sole person in the spotlight, she fared much better at Thursday's debate, where half of the questions were posed first to Mr. Biden - which, in turn, meant that Ms. Palin had 90 seconds to prepare her answer or riposte. Indeed, in her political campaigns in Alaska, Ms. Palin came across as confident and on point, as she did for the most part against Mr. Biden.

"I do respect your years in the U.S. Senate, but I think that Americans are craving something new and different and that new energy and that new commitment that's going to come with reform," Ms. Palin said. "I think that's why we need to send the maverick from the Senate and put him in the White House, and I'm happy to join him there."

Although Ms. Palin name-dropped several times, presumably to show fluency in foreign affairs, she did not always drop the right name. At one point, she referred to the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, as "McClellan."

Ms. Palin also tended to seize on a single point or phrase of Mr. Biden or the moderator, Gwen Ifill of PBS, and veer off on her own direction in her 90-second answer. Asked whether the poor economy would cause Mr. McCain to cut his spending plans, Ms. Palin picked up on Mr. Biden's discussion of energy to criticize Mr. Obama's positions on energy and talk about her fights against oil companies in Alaska.

In response to a question about her views on an exit strategy in Iraq, Ms. Palin championed Mr. McCain's support for the "surge" of American troops there; hailed "a great American hero," Gen. David H. Petraeus; and attacked Mr. Obama's Senate vote against federal financing for troops in Iraq, which Mr. Biden also once criticized.

After that, Mr. Biden turned to the moderator and said, "Gwen, with all due respect, I didn't hear a plan."

"Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq," Ms. Palin shot back. "You guys opposed the surge, the surge works, Barack Obama still can't admit that the surge works." (Mr. Obama has said in recent weeks that the surge had worked beyond most people's expectations.)

Fifty-five minutes into the debate, Mr. Biden seemed to lose his patience after Ms. Palin recalled, as she had a couple of times before, that Mr. Biden had praised Mr. McCain's views or actions in the past and added, "I respect you for acknowledging that."

Mr. Biden replied by linking Mr. McCain with Mr. Bush more crisply than he had done previously in the debate.

"The issue is how different is John McCain's policy going to be than George Bush's," Mr. Biden said. "I haven't heard how his policy is going to be different on Iran than George Bush's. I haven't heard how his policy is going to be different with Israel than George Bush's. I haven't heard how his policy in Afghanistan is going to be different than George Bush's. I haven't heard how his policy in Pakistan is going to be different than George Bush's.

"It may be, but so far it is the same as George Bush's."

Mr. Biden also turned tougher in the final half-hour after Ms. Palin had, several times, referred to Mr. McCain as a "maverick."

"He's not been a maverick when it comes to education - he has not supported tax cuts and significant changes for people being able to send their kids to college," Mr. Biden said. "He's not been a maverick on the war. He's not been a maverick on virtually anything that generally affects the things that people really talk about."

By Patrick Healy, The New York Times, October 2, 2008

The Republicans were euphoric over Sarah Palin's debate performance, particularly the part in which she stood tall and refrained from falling off the stage. "There are conservatives and Republicans across America who are ... breathing a sigh of relief," said Pat Buchanan on MSNBC, adding that "of the four debaters we've seen, she was the most interesting, attractive of them all."

Palin did indeed answer each question with poise and self-confidence, reeling off a bunch of talking points that were sometimes totally unrelated to the matter at hand. When she was asked to respond to Joe Biden's critique of the McCain health care plan, she announced: "I would like to respond about the tax increases," cheerfully ignoring the fact that tax increases had never been mentioned.

After the recent Katie Couric unpleasantness, Palin told the viewers that this time they were getting a chance to hear her "answer these tough questions without the filter." And, indeed, her answers were murky in the extreme. She railed repeatedly about government regulations getting in the way of the private sector, then announced that the financial rescue plan "has got to include that massive oversight that Americans are expecting and deserving." She said that she didn't want to discuss what caused global warming, only how to ease its impact.

She appeared to agree with Dick Cheney's manic theory that the vice president is a member of both the executive and legislative branches, although it's hard to tell since she began her answer this way: "Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position."

When the moderator, Gwen Ifill, asked under what circumstances the candidates would consider bringing America's nuclear weapons into play, Palin said: "Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet, so those dangerous regimes, again, cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, period."

It's hard to remember that a month ago, very few people had ever heard of Sarah Palin. McCain sprung his vice-presidential selection on us at the last minute, possibly under the impression that the country felt things had gotten too boring lately, and would appreciate the excitement of having a minimally experienced political unknown serving as backup to a 72-year-old cancer survivor.

Since then, she has spent most of her time going from one Republican rally to the next, repeating chunks of her convention speech, which have grown more disjointed with every stop. (In an airplane hangar in Ohio recently, she told the people of Youngstown she was happy to be there because Alaska has, per capita, the nation's most "small planes and small pilots.")

For reporters hoping to question her, she has been determinedly unfindable, a Judge Crater from Juneau. And after the Couric debacle, you can bet your boots that the campaign is going to take Palin's debate performance, declare victory and wrap her up until after the election.

This is all a terrible shame. For us, mainly. But also for Palin, whose intelligence and toughness may wind up buried under the legend of her verb-deprived ramblings.

Palin is, in many ways, a genuine heir to the women's liberation movement of the 1970s, which tried to make sure that future generations of American women would grow up feeling they had every right to compete with men for all the best rewards and adventures the world had to offer. She never seems to have had a single doubt that she could accomplish whatever she set her mind to. When she got involved in politics, she used the time-honored male route of cultivating powerful mentors, then pushing them out of the way at the first possible opportunity. When she was governor, she did what very few female politicians do, and ignored all the subsidiary issues in order to put all her bets on one big policy payoff in the form of a new state energy policy.

Then, somehow, she concluded that her success in clawing her way to the top of Alaska's modest political heap meant she was capable of running the United States.

This entire election season has been a long-running saga about the rise of women in American politics. On Thursday, it all went sour. The people boosting Palin's triumph were not celebrating because she demonstrated that she is qualified to be president if something ever happened to John McCain. They were cheering her success in covering up her lack of knowledge about the things she would have to deal with if she wound up running the country.

ST. LOUIS -- A confident, folksy Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin attacked the Democratic presidential ticket Thursday over tax hikes and partisanship, holding her own against her vice-presidential rival, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden.

Sen. Biden, assiduously avoiding any direct attacks on his opponent in their only debate, kept his focus trained on the top of the ticket. He charged again and again that Gov. Palin's partner, Republican Sen. John McCain, wants to give tax breaks to the rich, recklessly deregulate the economy, and keep the nation mired in Iraq.

Gov. Palin was more fluent on issues than she has been in televised interviews, throwing out facts, figures and names of foreign leaders with ease. She echoed her running mate's talking points, and didn't make the glaring mistakes that many had anticipated. But her citing of facts sometimes came across as rote, she twice misstated the name of the top American general in Afghanistan, and she was chided at times for not sticking to the subject at hand.

At a time of high economic anxiety, both candidates repeatedly invoked their middle-class roots, saying they understood economic pain. Gov. Palin noted her family once went without health insurance.

The debate came as a batch of recent polls suggested that the Obama-Biden ticket was pulling ahead in several battleground states, building on a small national lead. On Thursday, the McCain campaign pulled its ads and staff in Michigan, essentially ceding the state to the Democrats.

Gov. Palin brought to the Washington University stage a homespun tone that she has showcased on the campaign trail. Asked about the economy, she suggested talking to a parent at a soccer game. "I'll betcha you're going to hear some fear in that parent's voice," she said. Asked who was to blame for the subprime-lending crisis, she said, "Darn right, it was the predator lenders."

Sen. Biden delivered a withering critique of Sen. McCain's economic agenda, and noted that as the economic crisis was spilling over, Sen. McCain called the economy fundamentally strong, only to call it a crisis later that same day. "It does point out he's out of touch," Sen. Biden said.

He attacked Sen. McCain for favoring deregulation. Given an opportunity to respond to that, Gov. Palin went after Sen. Barack Obama on taxes instead -- one area of the economy where polls show voters trust Republicans more.

That prompted Sen. Biden to say: "The governor did not answer the question about deregulation, did not answer the question of defending John McCain about not going along with the deregulation, letting Wall Street run wild."

Gov. Palin smiled in response and used the occasion to underscore her frequent attacks on the media. "I may not answer the questions the way that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let 'em know my track record also," she said.

The pair differed on the constitutional role of the vice president, with Sen. Biden saying that Vice President Dick Cheney was wrong to claim he's not a member of the executive branch, and therefore immune from its rules. Gov. Palin didn't seem familiar with the issue.

"We will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position," she said. "Yeah, so -- and I -- I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there," she added.

The candidate with the most to prove in the contest was the 44-year-old first-term governor, who has electrified her Republican party, but is new to the national stage. She has done very few media interviews, and has turned in shaky performances in those she has granted.

Sen. Biden, 65 years old and a three-decade veteran of Capitol Hill, also faced peril, with his reputation for verbosity and shooting from the hip. He faced a delicate balance in seeking to score points without appearing condescending to the second woman ever to run on a major party ticket.

Sharp Differences

In a line of questioning reminiscent of last week's presidential debate, the two candidates were asked whether there were any proposals they now needed to take off the table in the face of the economic crisis.

Sen. Biden said the Obama administration would need to dial back its proposal to double foreign aid, perhaps the least politically risky statement he could make to American voters.

Gov. Palin took an equally safe path, and used the question to tell voters she's the freshest candidate in the race. She said she couldn't think of a proposal Sen. McCain has put forth that would now need to be withdrawn -- or at least nothing that she has proposed personally.

"There is not," she said. "And how long have I been at this, like five weeks? So there hasn't been a whole lot that I've promised, except to do what is right for the American people."

The contest had its share of humorous and emotional moments. Both candidates winked at the camera at different points in the debate. Sen. Biden grew misty as he recalled serving as a single father following the death of his first wife and infant daughter, saying: "Look, I understand what it's like to be a single parent."

The debate was a hybrid: 45 minutes of domestic policy and 45 minutes of foreign policy and the war in Iraq, which the Obama campaign has vowed to wind down.

Here, the two candidates, like the men at the top of their tickets, differed sharply. Sen. Biden, saying the Iraq war had distracted the U.S. from the war on terror, focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Sen. Biden said Sen. Obama favored a timetable for withdrawing American troops, as has President George W. Bush. Sen. McCain, Sen. Biden said, is "the only odd man out here."

Gov. Palin was sharp in her response. "Your plan is a white flag of surrender," she said, adding that "it goes beyond naivete" to suggest otherwise.

During the evening, the strategy of the two candidates became clear: Sen. Biden struggled to make the debate about Sen. McCain, and Gov. Palin sometimes strained to drive the conversation toward topics such as energy policy, an area where she has developed an expertise, running an oil-rich state.

Middle East Policy

Though Gov. Palin held her own in most cases, it was clear that Sen. Biden had a deeper understanding of many of the issues. He offered a detailed critique of the Bush administration policy on the Middle East. He noted, for instance, the fallout from supporting Palestinian elections that wound up legitimizing Hamas, a terrorist group.

Gov. Palin's response hit on none of the substance but suggested that Sen. Biden and his running mate spend too much time pointing to problems in the Bush administration.

"There's just too much finger-pointing backwards," she said.

Sen. Biden replied that to develop new policy, one must understand what went wrong in the past. "Look, past is prologue," he said. "Facts matter."

By Laura Meckler and Christopher Cooper, The Wall Street Journal, OCTOBER 3, 2008

The missteps they had been predicting for days didn't materialize as the vice presidential candidates went head-to-head.

The vice presidential debate scheduled for last night didn't happen -- at least not as envisioned by media observers with their characteristic mix of glee and dread.

Republican candidate Sarah Palin spoke in clear, concise sentences that mostly made sense, and if she didn't answer all the questions posed to her, at least she didn't tell the moderator that she'd "have to get back to ya." Neither did Democrat Joe Biden ramble or froth, mention the fictional televised speeches of FDR or accidentally call the governor of Alaska "Lil' Lady."

So how surprising was it, really, that neither candidate devolved into a Jerry Springer screaming fit or fell into a state of catatonia? In fact, both were in rare form, giving what may have been their best respective campaign performances yet.

Palin came in with a clear advantage, of course. When all you have to do is prove you can address issues in a coherent way, it's fairly easy to exceed expectations. She set her tone instantly by asking the senator at the handshake if it was OK to call him Joe. He said, "Yes, of course," and from then on it was "Joe" and "Gov. Palin."

Indeed, with her "bless his/her hearts" and knowing laughs, Palin may have invented an entirely new rhetorical style: random folksiness. Each bit of lighthearted "Sarahness" was followed by a Serious Face as she got down to the issues. Or at least the issues she was comfortable with.

The most pointed difference between Biden's performance and Palin's is that he answered pretty much each question that was asked before returning to the topic of his choice (usually how John McCain mirrors the Bush administration). Palin pronounced early on that she wasn't necessarily going to answer questions but would instead address the American people directly.

If Palin was able to revive flagging Republican spirits by proving that she does have a basic grasp of campaign rhetoric and perhaps even the major issues facing this country, then Biden reminded Democrats why he has been a key player in their party for all these years.

His message was that the middle class drives the economy and that Barack Obama will take care of the middle class. It's a great message given the times, and he stuck to it as tightly as Palin stuck to her "and you said the surge wouldn't work" point on Iraq.

Biden was gracious enough not correct his opponent when she got a general's name wrong, though he did say repeatedly that he wasn't hearing how McCain differed from President Bush. He also rebutted any misstatements he felt she had made about his or Obama's record in a decidedly "I was there" sort of way.

Overall, Biden was the model of graciousness. Though Palin made several condescending remarks -- "I'm happy to know we both love Israel," she said at one point -- Biden kept his criticism aimed at McCain.

"Say it ain't so, Joe," Palin said at one point, accusing him of once again "pointing fingers at the past," as if she hadn't spent the entire hour and a half talking up McCain's record.

In the end, perhaps the most memorable aspect of the debate was the look of confusion on the face of the network commentators after the debate they had spent days rattling on about failed to materialize.

"I guess we'll just have to wait to hear what the viewers thought," said MSNBC's Chris Matthews. And that really has to be a first.




By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times, October 3, 2008

At a Colorado retirement community and among a crowd of students at the host university, interest in the debate was intense. A few minds may have been changed, and some stands stiffened.

ENGLEWOOD, COLO. -- John Rogers pushed his oxygen tank to the side, settled into his chair and summed up what everyone in the room at the Meridian Retirement Community here was thinking.

"Biden's just there," he said as the vice presidential candidates headed to the stage Thursday night for their only debate. "But everyone wants to see Palin."

Chiraag Alur, a 20-year-old from Texas, clutched two red shirts reading "Palin won," but that wasn't how he felt. He described himself as a lifelong Republican who had been planning to vote for McCain -- until he named Palin as his running mate.

"This is a Democrat town, and a Democrat school, but I didn't care," said Alur, a junior studying anthropology. "Now, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm going to vote Democrat. Palin has no experience to be in Washington, let alone being that close to the White House."

The crowd inside the Danforth University Center was clearly in Biden's corner, cheering when the Delaware senator bashed Vice President Cheney or the Bush administration, and equally vocal against Palin.

Allison Coffman, a 20-year-old junior majoring in Latin American studies, covered her face and groaned when Palin repeatedly said she would address only parts of certain questions.

"The only thing that makes sense is that McCain picked her to get my vote because I'm a woman," Coffman said. "She doesn't bring anything to the table. And the fact that she managed to never directly answer a question -- and supported a foreign policy where our leaders wouldn't sit down and talk with other leaders -- is terrifying."

At the Colorado retirement home, the residents knew about Palin's recent embarrassments in televised interviews in which she couldn't identify President Bush's doctrine of preemptive war or name a Supreme Court decision other than Roe vs. Wade. But even some who disliked her acknowledged that she performed well.

"She did much better than I anticipated," said Harriet Strong, 78, a retired school psychologist and registered Democrat. Of Biden, she added: "I think he's very intelligent. I think she is too, but she has to work harder."

Jeanne Van Voorhis, a registered independent who had leaned toward Obama, said she might change her mind after hearing Palin speak about energy production and middle-class values. "She's very good at saying what she believes in a very straightforward way," Van Voorhis said.

Not everyone was positive about Palin's folksy performance. "I don't want my vice president to say, 'Oh, heck,'" said Mary McCarty, "and I don't want her winking."

In St. Louis, some remained undecided. Sushma Tatineni, a 21-year-old senior and pre-med student, hoped to get a sense from the debate of which candidate she'd support. She backs Obama's social policies, and is intrigued by McCain's experience in Washington. But her biggest concerns are what the candidates would do with regard to healthcare and the economy.

"I have friends that graduated last year and had good jobs in banking, and now are out of work and have huge college loans," Tatineni said. "It makes me nervous about going into the real world."

As Tatineni left the center, she was leaning toward supporting Obama -- but still remained a bit unsure. "I didn't learn that much," Tatineni said. "I'll wait to see how the next few weeks, and how the presidential debates, go before I decide."





By Nicholas Riccardi and P.J. Huffstutter, Los Angeles Times, October 3, 2008

Political operatives and surrogates are only too happy to offer their views on the Palin-Biden vice presidential debate.

ST. LOUIS -- Imagine a school of ravenous guppies swimming around looking for food. Suddenly, someone tosses a handful of crumbs into the water. The guppies go crazy! They flit here, they flit there, they swirl around in chaotic guppy mobs, inhaling each crumb before moving on to the next.

That's what it feels like in the spin room after a major political debate. And that's how it was Thursday night after the hotly anticipated vice presidential matchup between Sen. Joe Biden and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin here at Washington University.

"I don't think anyone would have been reassured by her answer on nuclear proliferation," Axelrod said. "She said it would be the be-all and end-all for people. I think we all agree on that, but what are you gonna do about it?"

Next to him, Obama campaign strategist David Plouffe was reminding people that he has always believed Palin to be a good debater, but "there was no 'there' there."

Under the Lindsey Graham sign, the South Carolina senator was explaining that he was pretty sure Palin "misspoke" in her answer about bankruptcy judges rewriting mortgages.

"So what do you say to people who think Sarah Palin is just not smart enough to be president?" asked a reporter, thrusting his tape recorder at Graham. The senator did not flinch. "She's not only smart, she's got guts," he replied, gazing over the heads of the reporters pressed around him.

McCain's campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, bald and very pink, stared straight at the cameras in front of him. "How has the debate changed the race?" asked a reporter. With no detectable sarcasm, Schmidt replied, "The debate ended five minutes ago. It's tough to know how it has changed the race."

He did, however, manage to remind the swarming reporters that John McCain "is in a position to win this race" and that "Barack Obama's economic strategy will devastate the economy."

Meanwhile, John Oliver, the fake reporter from "The Daily Show," was circulating with his crew. Across the room, Washington University freshman and Encino native Jennifer Goldberger had spotted him and was on the phone with a friend, a huge fan of the English comedian.

"Keep your phone on," she said, "I am gonna have John Oliver call you. He's really busy right now, but don't turn your phone off!"

Oliver was, at that moment, a few yards away. He plopped down in front of a dark TV monitor (the debate had been over for nearly an hour) and began screaming at it while his cameraman rolled.

"Why aren't you gaffing?" he yelled. "No gaffes? This is boring!"

An actual reporter typing away on deadline looked up in irritation.

"Would you mind doing that somewhere else?" the reporter asked.

"This will only take two seconds," said Oliver, who shouted some more about the lack of gaffes before disappearing back into the guppy sea.





By Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times, October 3, 2008

She disagrees with her running mate's decision to forgo campaigning in what had been viewed as battleground state.




By Cathleen Decker, Los Angeles Times, October 4, 2008

Obama's support edges upward, with fewer voters remaining undecided. Some McCain backers voice concern about the Democrat's advantage.

Both sides claimed victory in Thursday's much-anticipated vice presidential debate, but on Friday the contours of the presidential contest remained much as they have been for weeks: Barack Obama holding a narrow advantage even as fewer voters are left to convince.

State polls showed Obama's support edging upward as previously undecided voters cast their lot. The result is that the Republican campaign has a much smaller pool from which to win support.

Recent polls by CNN-Time magazine in Nevada and Colorado, for example, showed the percentage of undecided voters at 2%, a third of what it had been weeks earlier. In both states, Obama held a four-point edge.

In the states where the next president will probably be decided, backers of Republican nominee John McCain described themselves as still confident but concerned about the Democratic ticket's current control of the race.

"McCain is letting Obama dictate the discussion," said Gregory Amend, the owner of an Ohio-based manufacturing firm and a McCain donor. "He needs to dictate the discussion."

In Missouri, which has voted with the winning presidential candidate every time but once since 1904, the race has narrowed to a dead heat.

"Ten days ago, you thought 'Maybe this year it won't be a dogfight in Missouri,' " said St. Louis attorney and Republican activist Ed Martin. "We are in for a dogfight."

Martin said Republicans "breathed a sigh of relief" that Sarah Palin survived the vice presidential debate, but he would not go so far as to suggest that meant a resurgence for McCain. "It's too early to say they've got their groove back," he said.

In Florida, the McCain campaign was diverting more money than once planned into advertising in the state's pricey media markets to offset polls showing upward movement by Obama. "The hope was you could lock Florida and put it away a month and a half ago," said Brian Ballard, a leading McCain fundraiser in the state.

The vice presidential debate ended with no major gaffes on either side -- and with instant polls of voters giving the edge to Democrat Joe Biden, the Delaware senator -- but the conclusion of another potential campaign-shifting event was good and bad news for McCain.

The performance by the Alaska governor did serve to allay concerns about her, even among conservatives, after rocky interviews in recent weeks.

Yet there are now only two planned events with the power to dramatically alter the race -- the second presidential debate Tuesday in Nashville and the final one the following week in New York.

Outside events could certainly intrude, but of late they have harmed the Arizona senator; his campaign has faltered as the nation's economic woes have increased. A compendium of new polls by Pollster.com, which has collected survey results throughout the campaign, found that 11 of 12 new statewide surveys showed movement in Obama's direction, compared with polls taken weeks earlier. Nationally, too, Obama continued to lead.

If McCain's campaign has been waylaid by the rising importance of the economy, it also has taken its focus at times off the battleground states key to electing the next president. Early this week, McCain was in Iowa, a state widely expected to go to the Democrats. On Friday, vice presidential nominee Palin woke up in St. Louis, in the middle of dead-heat Missouri -- but left there without a public event to head to GOP stronghold Texas, where she starred at a fundraiser. She will spend almost two days this weekend in California, where Obama is ahead by double digits. Why?

"The fundraisers in California -- well, more than one," answered Tucker Eskew, a senior campaign aide. "And California has got other races down ballot. It's very important."

Obama campaign communications director Robert Gibbs called McCain's visit to Iowa "baffling." "Texas and California are not on our maps as swing places," he added.

As the candidates stumped for votes Friday, the impact of new economic realities on the campaign was evident.

Obama interrupted a visit to a Pennsylvania flower shop, where he bought flowers for his wife on their anniversary, to laud passage of the House economic rescue bill and to direct attention to Friday's report that more than 150,000 jobs were lost last month. The number represented the steepest drop in years.

He struck at McCain's position on deregulation, a line of discussion that probably would have generated yawns from voters if not for the collapse of Wall Street titans in recent weeks. Now, however, it is an argument could serve to undercut McCain's persona as a "maverick."

"He's now going around saying, 'I'm going to crack down on Wall Street -- I'm going to really get tough on these folks,' " Obama said. "But the truth is for 26 years, he's been saying, 'I'm all for deregulation.' For 26 years, he has said the market is king."

Unlike Obama, who has used the faltering economy as an argument against a third successive Republican term in the White House, McCain used the economic developments to argue that he was better positioned to bring reforms to Washington.

In Colorado, another contested state, he mentioned the jobs report and spoke about the need to bolster the economy but seemed unaware that the bailout bill had just passed.

"There was a jobs report that came out today that's terrible news for America," he said in Pueblo. "I have to give you straight talk, my friends; I can't give you rosy scenarios. We're in a tough fight to get our economy back.

"But I can also tell you that energy, it will be a creator of millions of jobs here in Colorado and around America, and we have to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil."

After flying to Arizona, he commended the House for passing the economic measure but did not mention the loss of jobs.

Though poll results can be upended by new events, campaigns react with worry to voter movements at this stage. The more polls show Obama ahead, the theory goes, the more voters expect him to win and the more comfortable they get with that prospect. In many states, too, voters are able to cast early ballots.

"Running for president is an all-or-nothing proposition," said Republican Carl Bearden, a former Missouri legislator who counseled McCain to be "more demonstrative."

"Everything that needs to be said is there. It is not crafting it. It's delivering it," Bearden said, adding that "Obama does a great job of delivering his message."




By Cathleen Decker and Dan Morain, Los Angeles Times, October 4, 2008

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday called Republican presidential candidate John McCain not a maverick but a "mimic" of President Bush.

Clinton made the remarks at a Human Rights Campaign dinner, where she was filling in for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's running mate, Joe Biden. Biden canceled his weekend campaign events because his wife's mother is ill. Clinton spoke by satellite from Los Angeles to a few thousand people who attended the national gay rights group event.

Clinton said Biden called and asked her to fill in for him because of the family emergency. Rather than sharing her thoughts, she said, "I want to share with you the eloquent remarks that Joe had prepared."

Clinton sought to tie McCain to Bush, saying the Arizona senator offered voters "more of the same."

"He's not a maverick. He's a mimic," she said.

She noted that McCain doesn't support extending job discrimination and hate-crimes laws to cover sexual orientation and supports the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Clinton said Americans can choose in the November election whether the nation takes steps toward "securing equality and dignity for all Americans, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity."

"Or we can choose four more years of the same failed policies, four more years of the same small-minded governance, four more years that look just like the last eight," she added.

The Obama campaign has repeatedly tried to tie McCain to Bush in voters' minds, an approach GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin portrayed in a debate with Biden on Thursday as looking backward rather than forward.

Clinton's comments came as the McCain campaign stepped up attacks on Obama's character. Palin on Saturday accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists" because of an association with a former '60s radical. The Obama campaign called Palin's remarks offensive but unsurprising given news reports about the McCain campaign's come-from-behind game plan.

By ANN SANNER, Associated Press, October 5, 2008

PHILADELPHIA - Bruce Springsteen called the Bush presidency "a disaster" and said many Americans have "justifiably lost faith" in the American dream.

The legendary rocker interrupted a seven-song acoustic set at a voter-registration rally in Philadelphia on Saturday to praise Democrat Barack Obama and bemoan the crises facing the next president. Springsteen said that America remains a house of dreams for some, but that too many people have given up on the promise of fairness and equality.

"I've spent 35 years writing about America and its people and the meaning of the American promise - a promise handed down right here in this city," said the New Jersey rocker, whose songs often depict down-on-their-luck, working-class dreamers. "Our everyday citizens ... have justifiably lost faith in its meaning."

The rally, planned by the Obama campaign a week ago, drew tens of thousands of people to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Springsteen approached the campaign and asked to help out, an Obama aide said. The Philadelphia event came just days before Monday's voter registration deadline in Pennsylvania.

"The Boss" also plans to perform at Obama gatherings in Ohio on Sunday and Michigan on Monday. On Oct. 16, he will join Billy Joel at an Obama fundraiser in New York City.

Springsteen cited the Iraq war, the recent economic turmoil and Hurricane Katrina as examples of the Bush administration's failures. He bookended the set with his rock classic "Promised Land" and Woody Guthrie's folk anthem, "This Land is My Land."

The Obama camp says its registration efforts have helped give Democrats a 1.2 million-voter advantage over Republicans in Pennsylvania, up from a 580,000-voter lead in 2004. The most recent Quinnipiac University poll, conducted late last month, showed Obama with a 54 percent to 39 percent lead over Republican John McCain among likely state voters.

Artist Colleen Dougherty-Bronstein, 55, of Yardley, was perhaps one of the few undecided voters on hand.

"I have concerns about both candidates," she said. "Are either of them strong enough to take on the mess that they'll be going on to?"

By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press, October 5, 2008

WASHINGTON - One month before Election Day, Barack Obama sits atop battleground polls in a shrinking playing field, the economic crisis is breaking his way and he has made progress toward winning the White House.

The onus is on Republican John McCain to turn the race around under exceptionally challenging circumstances - and his options are limited.

McCain's advisers say the Arizona senator will ramp up his attacks in the coming days with a tougher, more focused message describing "who Obama is," including questioning his character, "liberal" record and "too risky" proposals in advertising and appearances.

Obama's advisers, in turn, say he will argue that McCain is unable to articulate an economic vision that's different from President Bush's. In a new push, the Illinois senator is calling McCain's health care plan "radical."

Now that the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin is over, the contest returns to being entirely about Obama and McCain and likely will stay that way until Nov. 4. The rivals meet Tuesday in their second of three debates.

Interviews with party insiders across the country Friday showed this: Democrats are optimistic of victory if nervous over whether Obama can hold his advantage while Republicans are worried that the race may be moving out of reach though hopeful that McCain will beat the odds as he did in the GOP primary.

Both sides note that plenty can change in one month - and they're right.

"Very confident, yet not overly so," said Ohio Democratic Party chief Chris Redfern, who said the financial turmoil is dreadful for the country but "politically it's advantageous" for Obama.

South Carolina GOP Chairman Katon Dawson said that given McCain's standing, "I'd be concerned at this time, but I would never count this guy out. He's got the political hide of an alligator."

The Electoral College battle playing out over roughly a dozen states puts McCain's challenge to reach the necessary 270 votes in stark terms.

McCain can't prevail without holding onto most of the states that Bush won, and he's now virtually tied or trailing in public polls in at least 10 of them - Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia - as he tries to fend off Obama's well-funded advertising onslaught and grass-roots efforts.

The GOP nominee also is only playing in five states that Democrat John Kerry won in 2004 - Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Hampshire and, now, Maine - and he's running behind. McCain abandoned efforts Thursday in one other, costly 17-vote Michigan, as Obama approaches a double-digit lead in the high-unemployment state and it became clear McCain couldn't shake Bush's drag.

Some Republicans close to McCain's campaign fret in private that Obama may be pulling away for good; others aren't so pessimistic. But there's unanimity in this: McCain has dwindling chances to regain momentum, and the upcoming debates are critical.

"He needs to be able to speak to his strengths and remind people of why they like him," said Tom Rath, a New Hampshire delegate to the Republican National Convention. And Ted Welch, a veteran Republican fundraiser in Tennessee, said: "He has to give voters enough reasons to vote for him. He hasn't yet."

That doesn't appear to be the campaign's priority. GOP operatives say the goal is to undercut Obama, likely by criticizing his associations with convict Antoin "Tony" Rezko and William Ayers.

Indeed, Palin wasted no time Saturday in Colorado, saying: "Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." It was a reference to Ayers, a founder of a 1960s radical group.

Obama's campaign called Palin's comments "desperate and false attacks" intended to change the subject from the economy.

It's clear McCain's campaign believes that making Obama supremely unacceptable in voters' eyes may be the Republican's best - if not only - shot at winning the presidency.

The risk: Voters could be turned off if McCain goes too far.

Over the past two weeks, McCain's staff has been discouraged by the difficult environment, though no less determined to win.

Advisers contend McCain is rebounding after a strong debate performance Thursday by Palin quieted GOP critics who questioned her qualifications after several TV interview missteps. Congress approved the bailout plan one day later, and advisers hope the issue now will fade.

But economic woes continue; the nation lost 159,000 jobs in September and disappointing 401(k) statements are headed for voters' mailboxes.

Obama, meanwhile, was lifted in polls by voters who think he's better suited to lead the nation through the financial crisis. Surveys also showed that skeptical voters having trouble envisioning him as president started to come around. He's a 47-year-old freshman senator from Chicago who would be the country's first black president.

The Democrat, to be sure, still has much work to do to lock down his lead. His advantage easily could disappear if he stumbles - or if an adverse outside event occurs. And he hasn't made the sale to many voters.

"He needs to give a little bit more of a window into Barack Obama as a human being ... reveal himself in a way that people who like Barack Obama say, 'I really want to embrace this guy,'" said Steve Grossman, a Massachusetts Democrat and former national party chairman.

Added Joe Erwin, the former Democratic Party chief in South Carolina: "We've just got to swim our own race at this point, and not react to what the Republicans do because we know that what we're doing is working."

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press, October 4, 2008

The escalated effort to attack Obama's character dovetails with TV ads by outside groups questioning Obama's ties to Ayers, convicted former Obama fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko and Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Ayers is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He and Obama live in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood and served together on the board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based charity that develops community groups to help the poor. Obama left the board in December 2002.

Obama was the first chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school-reform group of which Ayers was a founder. Ayers also held a meet-the-candidate event at his home for Obama when Obama first ran for office in the mid-1990s.

Earlier today, Palin spent 35 minutes at a diner in Greenwood Village where she met with Blue Star Moms, a support group of families whose sons or daughters are serving in the armed forces. Reporters were allowed in the diner for less than five minutes before being ushered out by the campaign.

Palin, whose 19-year-old son, Track, deployed last month as a private with an Army combat team, was overheard at one point commiserating with one of the mothers: "Any time I ask my son how he's doing, he says, 'Mom, I'm in the Army now.'"

Taking one question from reporters about competing in battleground states, Palin repeated her wish that the campaign had not pulled out of Michigan, a prominent state in presidential elections where Obama leads by double-digit percentage points in recent polls.

"As I said the other day, I would sure love to get to run to Michigan and make sure that Michigan knows that we haven't given up there," she said. "We care much about Michigan and every other state. I wish there were more hours in the day so that we could travel all over this great country and start speaking to more Americans. So, not worried about it but just desiring more time and, you know, to put more effort into each one of these states."





The Associated Press, October 5, 2008

He shifts focus after recent emphasis on the economy and the bailout plan.

NEWPORT NEWS, VA. -- As the presidential campaign entered its final month, Democrat Barack Obama issued a sharp assault on Republican John McCain's healthcare proposal today, arguing it would lead to higher taxes for working families and knock as many as 20 million people out of their current insurance plans.

Obama's comments, along with four television ads that his campaign is airing in battleground states today, marked a new focus after recent campaigning on the economy as the just-passed $700-billion bailout package moved through Congress.

McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds accused Obama of "lying to voters."

"John McCain will improve the tax code so that middle-class paychecks aren't used to pay government bureaucrats, but instead will pay for the access to healthcare Americans deserve," Bounds said.

McCain's healthcare plan would eliminate tax breaks on employer-sponsored healthcare benefits and instead give Americans tax credits to seek their own plans in the private market. Individuals would get a $2,500 tax credit and families would get a $5,000 credit.

Obama called the plan "radical" several times today.

The McCain campaign argues its plan would reduce the amount most Americans spend on healthcare by creating more competition for insurance plans and better coverage options.

"John McCain trusts the judgment of the American people," senior policy advisor Doug Holtz-Eakin said in a conference call responding to Obama's speech. "He's willing to put money in their hands because they know what's best."

But campaigning in heavily contested Virginia at a park overlooking the James River, Obama argued that McCain's plan amounted to "pulling an old Washington bait-and-switch."

"It's a shell game. He gives you a tax credit with one hand -- but he raises your taxes with the other," Obama said.

"A $5,000 tax credit. That sounds pretty good," Obama said. But he noted that a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that the average cost of a family healthcare plan is more than $12,000. "So where would that leave you? Broke," Obama said.

A number of analysts have concluded McCain's plan to tax employer-sponsored health benefits would mean younger workers may abandon such plans to find less expensive ones on the open market -- meaning employers could end up with a pool of higher-risk workers. "Many employers will drop their healthcare plans altogether," Obama predicted.

"Under the McCain plan, at least 20 million Americans will lose the insurance they rely on from their workplace," he said, citing a recent analysis of McCain's plan in the publication of Health Affairs.

But Obama did not mention that the same analysis found 21 million could gain coverage under the Republican nominee's plan.

Holtz-Eakin called the Democrat's assertion that employers would stop providing insurance patently false. Employers would still be able to deduct health insurance costs, and they would still be competing to attract quality employees, he said.

"Their incentive will be unchanged," Holtz-Eakin said.

John Holahan, director of the nonpartisan Health Policy Center at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said that Obama's wording about the 20 million workers was technically correct but that analyses of McCain's plan have shown "the net effect is more or less a wash, or a small gain."

Obama's charge about taxes rising under McCain's plan is true for some people, Holahan said. His understanding is that McCain's tax credit would be pegged to the consumer price index; healthcare costs traditionally have risen more quickly.

"After five to 10 years, the current tax deduction is going to be worth more than the current value of the credit," Holahan said. "Depending on your income, you could be worse or better off."

Holtz-Eakin said Obama's claim was false. Most employees who receive coverage from their employers would have money left over from the tax credit to use in flexible spending accounts, he said.

For example, workers in the 10% tax bracket who receive $12,000 worth of employer coverage would have a $1,200 tax liability on their coverage -- and $3,800 left for their health accounts. Those in the top tax bracket would have a $4,200 liability, leaving $800 for the flex account, he said.

"It is the case there may be some people at the very top who have a liability greater than their health tax credit," he said. But "under the current system . . . we are having the middle class pay taxes and subsidize the gold-plated coverage of the most affluent in America."

Holtz-Eakin said the McCain plan also levels the playing field for those who currently buy their health insurance on the market.





By Maeve Reston and Seema Mehta, Los Angeles Times, October 4, 2008

She also calls on them to get out the vote for Democrats running for Congress.

Between bites of taquitos and guacamole, Gonzales explained that she had switched her allegiance to Obama as soon as Clinton conceded the race in June. Now, she said, her task is to persuade her friends who are leery of Obama to do the same.

In a brief news conference after her speech, Clinton brushed off questions about whether some supporters, still bitter from her loss to Obama, might vote for the Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

"I think that people who supported me have much more in common with Sen. Obama and his agenda than with Sen. McCain," she said.

She predicted that the nation's rocky economy would help Obama's chances in November.

"As the real stakes of the election become clearer, you're going to see Obama gain across the country," Clinton said. "As more and more people look at what is being offered, I'm just really confident that we're going to win."

Clinton will speak tonight at an "Angelenos Go Green for Obama" fundraiser in downtown Los Angeles at the Edison, a power-plant-turned-swanky-lounge.

Organizers say the event, powered by biodiesel generators and featuring compostable plates and flatware, will be the first zero-waste and carbon-neutral political fundraiser.

Actors William Baldwin, Catherine Keener and Meg Ryan will attend, and Jon Bon Jovi will entertain.

Clinton won about 18 million votes in the hard-fought Democratic primaries. In the months since she dropped out, she has actively campaigned for Obama.

In her speech Friday, she talked up her latest initiative, which aims to convert her supporters into a pro-Obama network called Hillary Sent Me!

The program, organized by Clinton's political action committee, HillPac, in conjunction with the Obama campaign, mobilizes volunteers to travel to battleground states to help Democrats with their grass-roots organizing.

This weekend, it urged volunteers to travel to Ohio -- a key swing state -- to canvass for Obama.

The weekend after that, it will push volunteers to work in Pennsylvania.

Many Clintonites at Friday's event said they were busy organizing for Obama. Barbara Douglass, 86, the president of the Democratic Women's Study Club in Long Beach, said her organization was making phone calls for Obama.

She said it wasn't always easy supporting Clinton's former rival, but she was doing it because it's what Clinton wants. "I was brokenhearted when she lost," Douglass said. "I'm going to vote for Obama, but not with the same thrill."





By Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times, October 4, 2008

Palin and Biden State Cases for Changing Washington, Repairing Economy

ST. LOUIS, Oct. 2 -- Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joseph R. Biden Jr. each sought to claim the mantle of "kitchen table" candidate in the first and only debate between the major-party vice presidential candidates last night, both arguing that their running mates better understand the concerns of middle-class Americans worried about the nation's faltering economy.

On a night when presidential nominees John McCain and Barack Obama were relegated to the sidelines, Palin and Biden raced through a fast-paced debate that touched on same-sex marriage, the war in Iraq, and the nation's energy and foreign policies. Each escaped without major mishap, and Palin seemed to repair an image that had been damaged by recent media interviews and increasing public doubts about her readiness for the nation's No. 2 job.

From the opening moments of their highly anticipated 90-minute debate, each portrayed themselves as a voice for Middle America and attempted to make the case that their ticketmates are best prepared to bring change to Washington and the nation.

Palin, the first female governor of Alaska, referred to "average, middle-class families like mine," and in her first answer she suggested that the proper place to take the temperature of Americans' concerns about the economy would be at a Saturday-morning soccer game.

"Now, thankfully, John McCain has been one representing reform," Palin said. "People in the Senate, his colleagues" -- she turned to the senator from Delaware -- "didn't want to listen to him and wouldn't go towards that reform that was needed."

Biden trained his fire on McCain, noting that the senator from Arizona "two Mondays ago" claimed that the "fundamentals of the economy were strong."

He added: "That doesn't make John McCain a bad guy, but it does point out he's out of touch."

The debate, with its emphasis on quick answers and numerous topics, became a barrage of numbers and competing and conflicting visions of Obama and McCain.

Likely to be more lasting for viewers was the lack of obvious mistakes on either side, and an image of Palin that was more like the confident, smiling politician who burst onto the scene with a fiery speech at the Republican National Convention, and less like the stumbling candidate who has seemed ill prepared in a series of interviews broadcast recently with CBS News anchor Katie Couric.

She was respectful and cordial to Biden -- "Hey, can I call you Joe?" she asked when she greeted him onstage -- but quick to try to put him on the defensive about his past differences with Obama. "I watched all those debates," she said, referring to the Democratic primaries in which the two were rivals.

But the essence of the night -- and one of the major arguments of the campaign -- may have been illustrated by a long exchange after Biden said policies of the Bush administration have been an "abject failure."

"There's a time, too, when Americans are going to say, 'Enough is enough with your ticket,' on constantly looking backwards, and pointing fingers and doing the blame game," Palin said. "There have been huge blunders in the war. There have been huge blunders throughout this administration, as there are with every administration. But for a ticket that wants to talk about change and looking into the future, there's just too much finger-pointing backwards to ever make us believe that that's where you're going."

Biden seemed ready with a response.

"Look, past is prologue," he said. "The issue is, how different is John McCain's policy going to be than George Bush's? I haven't heard anything yet.

"I haven't heard how his policy is going to be different on Iran than George Bush's. I haven't heard how his policy is going to be different with Israel than George Bush's. I haven't heard how his policy in Afghanistan is going to be different than George Bush's. I haven't heard how his policy in Pakistan is going to be different than George Bush's."

In the foreign policy segment of the debate, the two candidates drew the same sharp distinctions on the war in Iraq that McCain and Obama sketched out in their first debate last week. Palin voiced her support for continuing the war, even using McCain's exact phrasing when attacking the Democrats on the issue.

"Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq," the governor said. "We're getting closer and closer to victory, and it would be a travesty if we quit now in Iraq."

Biden called the war "a fundamental difference between us. We will end this war. For John McCain there is no end in sight to end this war."

In one of their more heated exchanges, Palin charged that Obama "opposed funding for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senator Biden, I respected you when you called him out on that." After going out of her way to praise Biden for his support of the troops, she added, "Barack Obama, though, another story there."

Biden immediately counterattacked, noting that McCain voted against a measure that would have funded the troops because it included a specific timetable for withdrawal. "John McCain voted to cut off funding for the troops," he replied.

During much of the foreign policy discussion, Palin largely bypassed Biden and focused her attacks on Obama, questioning his pledge to meet with some of America's enemies, such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"It goes beyond naivete. It goes beyond bad judgment," she said. "A statement like that is downright dangerous."

Palin did not give much ground on foreign policy, mocking Biden by noting his initial support for the Iraq war, which he now opposes, even as she praised him on other fronts. "I'm a Washington outsider, so I'm just not used to the way you guys operate," she declared. "You voted for the war and now you're against it."

Biden took pains to portray the world stage as a more complicated place than Palin described, questioning the utility of applying certain strategies used in Iraq to other areas.

After Palin said, "The surge principles, not the exact strategy, but the surge principles that have worked in Iraq need to be implemented in Afghanistan, also," Biden pointed to recent comments made by the senior U.S. officer in Afghanistan about the war.

"Our commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge principle in Iraq will not work in Afghanistan," he said. "Not Joe Biden, our commanding general in Afghanistan."

On domestic policy issues, both candidates sparred politely over tax policy, energy, health care and same-sex marriage. Prodded by moderator Gwen Ifill of PBS, the candidates spent most of the first half of the debate trading barbs about taxes and the economy.

Both described the current economic trouble as an us-vs.-them narrative in which the wealthy are taking advantage of the middle class.

"Let's commit ourselves -- just everyday American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation -- I think we need to band together and say, 'Never again,' " Palin said. "Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars."

Biden refused to concede the middle class to Palin and McCain. He repeatedly accused the Republican ticket of seeking tax breaks for big corporations, especially oil companies.

"John wants to add $300 million, billion in new tax cuts per year for corporate America and the very wealthy while giving virtually nothing to the middle class," Biden said. "We have a different value set. The middle class is the economic engine. It's fair. They deserve the tax breaks, not the super-wealthy who are doing pretty well."

Biden rarely talked about Palin's record as governor, returning often to McCain's history in the Senate. He accused McCain of backing government deregulation during his career that allowed Wall Street to "run wild," leading to the current economic crisis.

"John McCain -- and he's a good man -- but John McCain thought the answer is that tried-and-true Republican response: deregulate, deregulate," Biden said. "He wants to do for the health-care industry -- deregulate it and let the free market move -- like he did for the banking industry."

The two candidates repeated their campaign slogans on taxes. Palin accused Obama of voting to support tax increases 94 times, a claim that Biden forcefully rejected as false.

"Barack had 94 opportunities to side on the people's side and reduce taxes, and 94 times he voted to increase taxes or not support a tax reduction -- 94 times," Palin said.

"The charge is absolutely not true. Barack Obama did not vote to raise taxes," Biden responded. "Using the standard that the governor uses, John McCain voted 477 times to raise taxes. It's a bogus standard."

On health care, Palin said Americans would not want it "taken over by the feds," while Biden accused McCain of trying to fool the public with a tax credit for health-care insurance that would become more expensive because of the Republican's policies.

"So you're going to have to place -- replace a $12,000 plan with a $5,000 check you just give to the insurance company," Biden said. "I call that the ultimate bridge to nowhere."

Palin, who governs the nation's largest oil-producing state, was aggressive on energy, calling opposition to expanded drilling a "nonsensical position" and saying that "people are so hungry for those domestic sources of energy to be tapped into."

Biden blasted McCain on the issue, saying: "John McCain has voted 20 times against funding alternative energy sources and thinks, I guess, the only answer is drill, drill, drill. Drill we must, but it will take 10 years for one drop of oil to come out of any of the wells that are going to begun to be drilled."

The debate devoted very little time to social issues. But Ifill did seek to clarify the candidates' positions on same-sex marriage.

Both said they oppose redefining marriage, and they seemed also to agree on the need for legal rights for gay couples.

"No one would ever propose, not in a McCain-Palin administration, to do anything to prohibit, say, visitations in a hospital or contracts being signed, negotiated between parties," Palin said.

Biden praised that answer, saying, "If that's the case, we really don't have a difference."

By Robert Barnes and Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post, October 3, 2008

Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat joe Biden sparred over taxes, energy policy and the Iraq war in a high-profile debate in which Palin sought to reclaim her identity as a feisty reformer and Biden tried to undercut the maverick image of GOP presidential hopeful John McCain.

"I think things went very well last night," Palin said Friday as she flew to Texas for a fundraiser. "It was energizing and I was happy to have had the opportunity."

Palin, in the 90-minute forum broadcast Thursday night from Washington University in St. Louis, was under intense pressure to show basic competence on issues facing the next president after a series of embarrassing television interviews called into question her readiness for high office.

For the most part she appeared confident and folksy while casting Biden and Democratic standard bearer Barack Obama as tax-raisers who would risk defeat in Iraq and the broader war on terror.

Two quick polls indicated that Biden fared better in the debate. A CBS News/Knowledge Networks Poll found that 46 percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate thought Biden won, with 21 percent siding with Palin. A CNN poll found respondents judging Biden the winner by a margin of 51 percent to 36 percent but calling Palin more likable by 54 percent to Biden's 36 percent.

Palin tried to portray the Democrats as obsessed with the failures of President Bush even as she acknowledged his Republican administration was responsible for "huge blunders" in the war and elsewhere.

"For a ticket that wants to talk about change and looking into the future, there's just too much finger-pointing backwards to ever make us believe that that's where you're going," Palin said, saying she and McCain were the real change agents in the race.

But Palin also sidestepped certain questions, pivoting at times to talking points and generalities.

Asked by moderator Gwen Ifill if she would support legislation allowing debt-strapped mortgage holders to file for bankruptcy to get out from under that debt, Palin said yes but avoided details, quickly steering the focus back to a more general discussion of the "toxic mess" in the financial industry.

And asked how she as vice president would help reduce partisanship in Washington, she said, "Let's commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again."

Biden, for his part, largely avoided direct challenges to Palin and instead worked to undermine McCain, who has sought throughout the campaign to distance himself from the unpopular Bush.

The Delaware senator repeatedly noted that McCain had sided with Bush on crucial issues, from launching the war in Iraq to tax policies that widened the income disparity between rich and poor.

"He's been a maverick on some issues, but he has been no maverick on the things that matter to people's lives," Biden said of McCain, noting that the Arizona senator had voted for Bush's budget proposals and against legislation providing heating oil assistance to low income families and enrolling more children in government-sponsored health insurance.

The candidates traded jabs on energy. Palin criticized the Democratic ticket for opposing offshore oil drilling while Biden chided McCain for voting against proposals in the Senate to expand the development of alternative energy sources.

Palin repeatedly mentioned Obama's vote in 2005 for an energy bill that allowed oil companies to receive large corporate tax breaks, saying she had worked to stop such corporate greed among oil interests in Alaska.

"Bless their hearts ... they're not my biggest fans," Palin said of executives at ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.

Palin also restated her controversial view that climate change is largely due to cyclical changes in the earth's atmosphere and not primarily caused by human behavior. Biden disagreed, saying climate change was caused by man.

On taxes, Biden reaffirmed his position that it was "patriotic" for people who earn more than $250,000 to pay additional taxes. Obama's tax plan would cut taxes for about 90 percent of Americans, Biden said.

When Palin called his position a "redistribution of wealth principle," Biden shot back, observing that McCain wanted to reduce taxes on businesses and the very rich.

"We don't call a redistribution in my neighborhood Scranton, Claymont, Wilmington, the places I grew up ... to say that not giving ExxonMobil another $4 billion tax cut this year as John calls for and giving it to middle class people to be able to pay to get their kids to college. We call that fairness," Biden said.

On social issues, the candidates both said they supported partnership rights for gay and lesbian partners but opposed same sex marriage.

The exchange over Iraq was personal for the two candidates, both of whom have sons set to deploy there with military units.

"Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq and that is not what our troops need to hear today, that's for sure," Palin told Biden, who like Obama supports a timetable to remove U.S. troops from the region.

"You guys opposed the surge," Palin said, referring to Bush's decision in 2007 to send an additional 30,000 combat troops to Iraq. "The surge worked. Barack Obama still can't admit the surge works."

Biden defended Obama's vote in May 2007 not to fund military operations in Iraq unless a timeline was set for withdrawal, even though Biden sharply criticized the Illinois senator's vote at the time. And Biden tried to turn the table on McCain, questioning his judgment on the Iraq conflict from the beginning.

By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press, October 3, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US dailies on Friday differed sharply in scoring the vice presidential debate between Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden, suggesting that neither candidate clearly won over public opinion.

The Wall Street Journal said the first term Alaska governor "more than held her own" in debating foreign policy with the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and "won on points at least on Iraq and Afghanistan."

The conservative business daily said she had "shown herself worthy of the national stage" both in the debate and in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, and should be allowed to do more media interviews.

"Let Mrs Palin be herself, and then when she makes a mistake, as every candidate does, it won't be treated like some epic judgment on her fitness to be vice president," the Journal argued.

The New York Times gave a scalding review of Palin's performance.

"The debate did not change the essential truth of Ms Palin's candidacy: Mr McCain made a wildly irresponsible choice that shattered the image he created for himself as the honest, seasoned, experienced man of principle and judgment," it said.

"After a series of stumbling interviews that raised serious doubts even among conservatives about her fitness to serve as vice president, Ms Palin had to do little more than say one or two sensible things and avoid an election-defining gaffe" in Thursday's debate, it said.

"By that standard, and only that standard, the governor of Alaska did well."

The Washington Post gave both sides a tepid review.

"It is a measure of the low expectations for last night's vice-presidential debate that what was, in the end, rather a surface-skimming discussion full of evasion and mischaracterization, was viewed as good news for both Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Joseph Biden," it said.

"Mr Biden was neither discursive nor condescending, as he can be; Ms Palin was more confident and more coherent than she had been in the few, increasingly disastrous interviews she has given since joining the Republican ticket.

"But there was little serious give-and-take about the major issues of the day -- from the Wall Street bailout to the war in Iraq -- and much trading of canned and misleading talking points," the Post opined.

AFP, October 3, 2008

ABINGTON, Pa. - Democrat Barack Obama used word of the nation's worst monthly job loss in over five years Friday to argue the policies of his Republican opponents "are killing jobs in America every single day." Republican John McCain retorted that Obama's tax and spending plans won't solve the problem.

The government reported employers cut 159,000 jobs last month, the ninth straight month of job losses. The crowd gathered to hear Obama at a Pennsylvania high school football field booed when he told them the numbers and again when he told them McCain recently said the economy is fundamentally strong and has made great progress under President Bush.

The Illinois senator encouraged voters to change the Republican leadership in the White House that he said hasn't worked. He disputed McCain running mate Sarah Palin's claim in a debate Thursday night that own spending plan would be a job killer.

"When Sen. McCain and his running mate talk about job killing, that's something they know a thing or two about," Obama said. "Because the policies they've supported and are supporting are killing jobs in America every single day."

Hours later at a town hall meeting in Pueblo, Colo., McCain himself said Obama's plans would hurt the economy.

"He wants higher taxes, more government, higher spending, and frankly that record is not something which has been good for America and we won't let it happen," McCain said. The McCain campaign launched a new national TV ad Friday repeating his criticisms of Obama's tax plans.

Obama is proposing tax increases only for those earning more than $250,000 but would cut taxes for those making less - details that McCain and Palin don't mention.

Their dispute came as Congress approved a $700 billion measure to bail out the financial industry. Both campaigns said their candidates called lawmakers on behalf of the bill. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus credited Obama with changing their minds, including Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Reps. Elijah Cummings and Donna Edwards, both Maryland Democrats.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said, "He's made a number of calls today. We are not releasing specifics at this time." But Republican Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina, who switched her vote to favor the measure, said she hadn't heard from McCain. "They told me he was going to call me. He didn't," she said.

Speaking to reporters upon landing in Flagstaff, Ariz., McCain took credit for helping push the bailout through Congress. Last week he briefly rearranged his campaign schedule to go to Washington as lawmakers began considering the package. He left to debate Obama but returned last weekend before the first House vote.

"I'm glad I suspended my campaign and went back to Washington to bring - to help bring - House Republicans to the table," McCain said.

Despite Congress' passage of the bailout, there was no indication the Wall Street crisis would give way to other campaign issues and more economic woes could be ahead.

Speaking in battleground Colorado, McCain defended the bailout, which he voted for in the Senate on Wednesday.

The Arizona senator said he is a "proud opponent of waste and pork barrel spending," possibly a reference to pet projects and sweeteners tucked into the rescue measure to win more votes after the House defeated it Monday with 133 Republicans and 95 Democrats voting no.

"But I also have to tell you that the government has to step in at this time and save Main Street from the challenges and the disaster that's looming," he said.

Later, a member of the town hall audience asked why the government is bailing out Wall Street first instead of helping individual homeowners.

"I know that a lot of people view this as a 'bailout for Wall Street.' I'm not interested in helping Wall Street in any way," McCain said. He said rescuing the financial industry will give Americans confidence in the economy and help stabilize the housing market, which would eventually benefit homeowners.

With that grim economic backdrop, Obama is seeking to solidify his lead in national and battleground polls, while McCain looks for a game-changing development to close a gap that grew in part because McCain struggled to respond to the financial crisis and because economic woes tend to push voters toward Democratic candidates.

Polls show Obama has made progress in persuading voters that he's ready to be president and that McCain would continue Bush's economic policies. But the Illinois senator still has work to do to lock down his lead in case outside events or campaign blunders change the campaign conversation.

Obama planned to continue to use the economy and McCain's 90 percent support for Bush in the Senate to hammer his opponent and to argue the GOP ticket has failed to articulate how it would be different from the Bush administration. Aides still view the race as very close.

McCain's campaign is trying to regroup from two disastrous weeks. As Wall Street crumbled, McCain struggled to strike the right note. Palin's qualifications came under fire from GOP critics after she appeared ill-informed in TV interviews. The GOP nominee's poll numbers slipped everywhere, dropping so far in Michigan that the campaign pulled the plug. It diverted resources elsewhere, even moving to shore up Republican bastions like Indiana and North Carolina.

The Arizona senator's advisers argued that Palin's debate performance quieted GOP critics and reassured other skeptics enough to stop McCain's slide, but it was too early to verify that. McCain advisers also hope Congress' approval of the bailout will help turn the page to other issues. They say McCain will go hard after Obama by emphasizing liberal positions Obama has taken in Senate votes.

By NEDRA PICKLER and SARA KUGLER, Associated Press, October 3, 2008

"We're playing offense," McCain senior advisor Greg Strimple told reporters on a conference call yesterday. "To say we're on defense is not true."

Nice try Greg, but that's like John McCain saying "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."

The McCain campaign quickly organized the call in response to the news that McCain was pulling out of Michigan--previously thought to be his best pickup state. ("I won't sugar coat it; the McCain Campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan is a tough blow," Michigan Republican Party Chair Saul Anuzis wrote.

Strimple justified the shift away from Michigan by arguing that "we are tied or ahead in public polling" in Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Missouri and Indiana.

"The assertions seemed, at best, cherry-picked and, at worst, ignorant of recent polling trends," Sam Stein of the Huffington Post wrote afterwards. Recent polling shows Obama ahead in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and North Carolina, with Indiana and Missouri still neck and neck.

Of the states John Kerry won in 2004, McCain advisor Mike DuHaime said Pennsylvania and Wisconsin remained their best pickup opportunities. "We're opening an aggressive front in Maine," he added.

The McCain strategists also highlighted their preferred line of attack in the coming month, repeatedly referring to Obama as the most liberal member of the Senate.

"I believe that in every one of those [swing states] they will snap back aggressively in our favor," Strimple claimed. "These are states with a conservative voting constituencies where you have the most liberal member of the United States Senate running at the head of the ticket. And in my years of polling I have never seen someone with a more aggressive liberal imagery among the electorate."

If only that were true. Strimple's assertion--repeated by Republicans over and over--rests of the same flawed National Journal analysis that said John Kerry (hardly a radical leftist) was the most liberal member of the Senate in 2003. If you look at all of the votes in the 110th Congress--not just the ones selected by National Journal--Obama is actually the 10th most liberal Senator, just behind Joe Biden and ahead of New Jersey Bob Menendez. The same ranking found that McCain was the 8th most conservative Senator. That doesn't sound too "maverick" to me.

The Nation, October 3, 2008

Brooklyn, N.Y. - Like so many Americans, I feel as though I am holding my breath.

Could the quiet seed of joy that was planted in my heart the day I heard Barack Obama speak for the first time take root and grow without fear of the brutal storms of disappointment?

Could a leader that evokes awe in me actually win a presidential election? Could the beauty – and logic – of his words win over the majority of this country's voters? Could they see past the lies and distractions to the center of a human being who sincerely wants to invoke citizens' higher selves?

Could a system that seems so broken, so moneyed, so corrupt actually serve to help the American people elect an authentic, complex thinker? Could it be that – despite all that is wrong with the electoral process – there is enough right to allow a thoughtful candidate to get through the muck and emerge earnest and excited to lead?

Could the inspirational, not aspirational, America that I was raised to believe in – Eleanor Roosevelt with her Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Martin Luther King Jr. with his dream, and John F. Kennedy with his "ask not" encouragement – be the America that I live in?

And finally, and perhaps most profoundly, could this country reflect the best within me?

There is part of me, I admit, that is fearful and self-focused and, worst of all, cynical. She understands why people stay home from the polls. But there is another part of me that is courageous and compassionate and, best of all, idealistic. If Senator Obama is elected, I feel as though that best part of me – the best part of all of us – will be given permission to lead.

As Nov. 4 nears, I feel heavy with internal struggle and dangerous anticipation.

I have never voted for a presidential candidate who has won, much less in an election that wasn't considered potentially corrupt. I have never gone to sleep on Election Day with a sense of accomplishment, with the satisfying congruency of my values and those of the country's leader merging as one.

I have never woken up the next day without a deep, wide sadness, without a sense that my country doesn't reflect my dearest beliefs, that it actually mocks my youthful enthusiasm for the political process and commitment to following my political heart.

Now I watch Obama, a leader who articulates my own ideas and intuitions with the most eloquent grace, on the brink of a presidential miracle. His words about the critical nature of cohesive community, about injustice, about personal responsibility ring so true in my ears. But I'm scared to believe.

I don't think that Obama is a "messiah." I know that he has flaws, that he will fail in many ways, that the space between his ideals and his actions will often gape with a discomfiting hypocrisy, or at the very least, inefficiency.

But I am almost certain that he is good deep down, that he believes, as I do, that we could do better, that we could be better, that we are – when stripped of bureaucracy and alienation and skepticism – already better.

It is not his inevitable fall from grace that I fear. It is the possibility that on Nov. 4, I will find out that my acute craving for a kind and complex leader is not shared by the majority of Americans. That conclusion to this breathtaking story would tempt me, not just to be alienated from American politics, but from the American people. I fear that the worst part of me would bully the best part with cruel words: "I told you so. Hope is dangerous and naive."

But what would Obama himself say to that sentiment? I imagine he'd stay calm, in his top-of-the-lake-on-a-still-day kind of way. He'd remind me that his candidacy was never about him, but about me, about all of us. That it isn't his victory that confirms America's greatness, nor his defeat that disproves it; it's our own capacity to be resilient and committed to change every day, in all sorts of quiet, nonpresidential ways.

If Obama is elected, if I am invited to rejoice with the majority of Americans, the best part of me will have a chance to smile triumphantly at the worst.

Sometimes you believe in someone and they inspire you right back. Sometimes kindness and wisdom triumph over fear and brutality. Sometimes this country is as amazing as your wildest imagination of it.

By Courtney E. Martin, The Christian Science Monitor, October 3, 2008

Early in last night's vice-presidential debate, Sarah Palin said that she might not answer the questions as moderator Gwen Ifill posed them. This was the Alaska governor's way of saying she was going to stick to the talking points she had stuffed into her head, no matter what the subject.

When Palin described John McCain's health-care plan, she talked about his offer of a $5,000 tax credit so families could buy insurance. She failed to mention that McCain would pay for the credit by taxing existing insurance benefits. Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden -- politely -- pounced on her omission, warning that McCain's plan could lead millions to lose their insurance coverage. Palin didn't come back to defend her running mate.

Nor did she come back when Biden challenged her false claims about how many times Barack Obama had voted for tax increases. Palin just plowed forward, piling one attack on top of another, with leavening references to "Joe Six-Pack" and "hockey moms."

Oh, yes, she did correct Biden on one thing. When he said the Republican energy slogan is "drill, drill, drill," she quickly reminded him that "the chant is drill, baby, drill." Thanks for clearing that up.

Last night's debate took place at the moment when a majority of American voters had decided that Palin was unprepared to be president if she were called upon to assume the office. Surveys by The Post and ABC News and by the Pew Research Center both found that doubts about Palin have risen sharply since the beginning of September.

The key to understanding how McCain chose Palin as his running mate was provided by the New York Times last weekend when it described an episode in which he "tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table." Americans are increasingly uneasy about the gamble they might take by putting Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Expectations for Palin were so low that the mere fact that she managed to keep talking and to keep assailing Obama will be rated as a great victory by McCain's lieutenants. But it was Biden who knew what he was talking about, who could engage in argument and who showed he actually understood the issues. In recent interviews with CBS anchor Katie Couric, Palin came off as profoundly uninformed, as someone who had given little thought to the issues that will matter. Nothing Palin did last night changed that. Those rooting for her were relieved. Those who doubted her readiness going in were not persuaded by her endless repetition of the word "maverick."

Palin has also brought out the very worst in McCain, forcing him to -- and I do not use this word lightly -- lie about her. In an interview broadcast Wednesday, National Public Radio's Steve Inskeep asked McCain if there would be "an occasion where you could imagine turning to Governor Palin for advice in a foreign policy crisis?"

McCain replied: "I've turned to her advice many times in the past. I can't imagine turning to Senator Obama or Senator Biden, because they've been wrong."

" Many times in the past?" McCain met Palin only twice before he selected her. What McCain said could not be true. And would anyone who listened to her last night really consult Palin on foreign policy?

This week, McCain's backers signaled their fears that Palin would fail by trying to discredit the debate in advance. Although it has been known at least since July that Gwen Ifill was writing a book on "Politics and Race in the Age of Obama," the usual right-wing attack squad waited until two days before the debate to mount a campaign to the effect that Ifill's book project turned her into a biased moderator. In her measured questioning, Ifill showed that the attack was nonsense.

The core issue, of course, is the contrast between how Obama and McCain chose their running mates. Say what you will about Joe Biden -- and last night, he was far from being either the gaffe machine or the windbag so many predicted would appear on stage -- no one loses sleep at the idea of his being in the Oval Office. Obama picked a vice president more likely to help him govern the country than win the chance to do so.

As for McCain, he found himself in a political hole and threw the dice with Palin. At the time of her selection, voters were often compared with "American Idol" watchers who put personality and stage presence above everything else. But it turns out that Americans take the presidency very seriously. And surviving 90 minutes on a stage with Biden did not transform Palin into a plausible president.

By E. J. Dionne Jr., The Washington Post, October 3, 2008

ST. LOUIS, Oct. 2 -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin spent much of the past two weeks on the defensive, hounded by critics over halting performances in television interviews and questioned even by conservative writers doubtful about whether she is ready to be vice president.

But the Palin who showed up for Thursday's debate against Democratic Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. was anything but defensive. In a fast-paced exchange about a range of domestic and foreign policy issues, she was the aggressive campaigner who in the first weeks of her candidacy had so energized the Republican faithful.

As a result, what was touted as a moment of truth for Palin instead turned into a lively and civil argument between the two vice presidential nominees over the policies and records of Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama. For 90 minutes, they sparred over Iraq and Afghanistan, energy and global warming, the economy and taxes, and which candidate would do more to protect the middle class.

One debate will not erase doubts that have been building about Palin's capacity to serve as vice president, but the effect of the encounter may shift the focus away from the sideshow that Palin has become and put it back on the two presidential nominees and what they would do for the country. Thursday's debate adds to the importance of the two remaining presidential debates, the first of which will be held Tuesday.

Palin produced at a moment McCain needed it most. In the past two weeks, his standing has deteriorated as the focus of national attention has shifted almost entirely to the economy. National and state polls show Obama gaining ground, and the preface to the debate Thursday was the news that McCain is pulling out of Michigan, once seen as a potential pickup.

She has done so twice, the first time coming at the Republican National Convention when Palin blunted growing criticism with a strong performance that lit up Republican hearts. But whether that will be enough to change the direction of a race that looks increasingly difficult for the Republicans is another story.

Biden did all he could Thursday to make sure that would not happen. If Palin was the surprise, he was the steady and experienced voice. She brought liveliness but he was looking to reassure voters who may have their own questions about Obama's readiness. If his effort resonated, Biden will have produced dividends for Obama and the Democrats.

For Palin detractors who expected a meltdown onstage at Washington University, the night was a disappointment. Republican strategists not directly connected with the campaign, some of whom had low expectations about how she would do, were thrilled by her performance. And if Biden's detractors hoped he would be windy or overbearing, they, too, were disappointed. He showed off his three decades of Washington experience in a way designed to instill confidence in voters about himself and Obama.

Palin and Biden were each appealing in their own way -- and in ways that neither McCain nor Obama were in their first debate last Friday. Palin wore a bright smile throughout the exchange and carried herself with confidence. McCain at times seemed testy and spent 90 minutes avoiding looking at Obama, but Palin directed her comments at her opponent and made eye contact. "Can I call you Joe?" she asked him as they strode across the stage for the traditional handshake during the introductions.

Biden was direct, not verbose, and his answers came crisply in contrast to Obama's more studied and sometimes pausing style of speaking. That he knew his brief was less surprising, given his experience, but he avoided speaking in the kind of senatorial vernacular that often hampers someone who has been in the capital as long as he has. And he, too, flashed his smile to good effect.

Palin, who struggled with questions in televised interviews, came to Thursday's debate well briefed. She did not stumble over names of foreign leaders. She had quick comebacks when Biden challenged her or went after McCain.

She also came with a game plan. Time and again, she invoked her small-town roots, her status as a Washington outsider and her connections as a hockey and soccer mom. If you want Washington changed, she said, send two mavericks to clean things up. "I think we need a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street there, brought to Washington, D.C.," she said.

She also sought to gain sympathy from the national television audience as someone who has been under fire from elites and her Democratic opponents. "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record," she said.

Biden also came with a plan, which was to pin McCain to President Bush and argue that if voters really want change, it will come only through the election of the Democratic ticket. He made that point about McCain on the economy and taxes but he was most forceful when the discussion turned to foreign policy.

Each time Biden sought to link McCain to Bush, Palin countered by accusing him of looking backward. "For a ticket that wants to talk about change and looking into the future, there's just too much finger-pointing backwards to ever make us believe that that's where you're going," she said. "Positive change is coming, though. Reform of government is coming. We'll learn from the past mistakes in this administration and other administrations."

Biden pushed back hard in response, arguing that past is prologue. "The issue is: How different is John McCain's policy going to be than George Bush's? I haven't heard anything yet," he said. "I haven't heard how his policy is going to be different on Iran than George Bush's. I haven't heard how his policy is going to be different with Israel than George Bush's. I haven't heard how his policy in Afghanistan is going to be different than George Bush's. I haven't heard how his policy in Pakistan is going to be different than George Bush's."

Reactions to the debate among political strategists fell almost predictably along partisan lines. But even some Democrats said Palin handled herself well. "The VP is no longer an issue," said Democrat Tad Davine. "Joe did well, too, especially at the end. I think there will no longer be a sideshow for the VP."

Other Democrats said that as well as she may have done, she probably did not sway undecided voters. "For people who were already inclined to vote for John McCain, there was nothing about Sarah Palin's performance to keep them from doing that," Democrat Geoff Garin said. "But McCain's problem is that there aren't enough people who are inclined to vote for him, and nothing about Palin's performance changed that, either."

But Republicans had a positive reaction, as if a weight had been lifted off McCain's shoulders. "She delivered big-time," said Tom Rath, a New Hampshire-based GOP strategist. "It was the best 90 minutes this campaign has had in two weeks. . . . Whatever expectations there were, she blew them away."

The vice presidential debate came with high interest and big expectations and certainly delivered, though not as some had predicted. That leaves it to Obama and McCain to argue it out for the next 32 days.

By Dan Balz, The Washington Post, October 3, 2008

With the vice presidential candidates set to square off today in their only scheduled debate, public assessments of Sarah Palin's readiness have plummeted, and she may now be a drag on the Republican ticket among key voter groups, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Tonight's heavily anticipated debate comes just five weeks after the popular Alaska governor entered the national spotlight as Sen. John McCain's surprise pick to be his running mate. Though she initially transformed the race with her energizing presence and a fiery convention speech, Palin is now a much less positive force: Six in 10 voters see her as lacking the experience to be an effective president, and a third are now less likely to vote for McCain because of her.

A month ago, voters rated Palin as highly as they did McCain or his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, but after weeks of intensive coverage and several perceived missteps, the shine has diminished.

Nearly a third of adults in a new poll from the Pew Research Center said they paid a lot of attention to Palin's interviews with CBS News's Katie Couric, a series that prompted grumbling among some conservative commentators about Palin's competency to be the GOP's vice presidential standard-bearer. The Pew poll showed views of Palin slipping over the past few days alone.

In the new Post-ABC poll, Palin matches the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., on empathy, one of McCain's clear deficits against Obama, while fewer than half of voters think she understands "complex issues."

But it is the experience question that may prove her highest hurdle, particularly when paired with widespread public concern about McCain's age. About half of all voters said they were uncomfortable with the idea of McCain taking office at age 72, and 85 percent of those voters said Palin does not have the requisite experience to be president.

The 60 percent who now see Palin as insufficiently experienced to step into the presidency is steeply higher than in a Post-ABC poll after her nomination early last month. Democrats and Republicans alike are now more apt to doubt her qualifications, but the biggest shift has come among independents.

In early September, independents offered a divided verdict on Palin's experience; now they take the negative view by about 2 to 1. Nearly two-thirds of both independent men and women in the new poll said Palin has insufficient experience to run the White House.

Obama was able for the first time to crack the 50 percent mark, albeit barely, on whether he has the experience to be president following Friday's presidential debate, and the question is one of Palin's central challenges as she prepares to face Biden in prime time before a national television audience.

More than two-thirds of voters in the Pew poll said they plan to watch the debate, far more than said they were going to turn on the vice presidential debate four years ago. The expectations are that Biden, a six-term senator, will win: Voters by a 19-point margin think he will prove to be the better debater.

In the new Post-ABC poll, majorities of conservatives and Republicans maintain that Palin has the necessary experience to step in as president, though those numbers are also down somewhat from early last month.

But a third of independent voters now indicate they are less likely to support McCain because of Palin, compared with 20 percent who said so in an ABC poll a month ago. Palin now repels more independents than she attracts to McCain. The share of independent women less apt to support McCain because of the Palin pick has more than doubled to 34 percent, while the percentage more inclined to support him is down eight points.

White Catholics, another important group of swing voters, also are now more likely to say that Palin dampens their support for McCain.

Still, nearly half of both white Catholics and independents said she does not affect their votes. Even more, about six in 10, said Obama's pick of Biden did not change their chances of voting Democratic.

The history of vice presidential picks suggests they are rarely consequential, and in a July Post-ABC poll, the nominees' choice for No. 2 was last on a list of 17 items voters said might sway their decisions.

The reaction to Palin, however, has been uncharacteristically strong.

Nearly three in 10 independent women have intensely unfavorable opinions of her, more than twice the proportion holding such views of Biden. And a majority of Democratic women now have "strongly unfavorable" views of Palin, up sharply from just after she accepted the nomination.

Among all voters, 29 percent have "strongly favorable" views, and an exactly offsetting number hold intensely negative ones. Attitudes toward Biden are more subdued.

Overall, 51 percent of voters view Palin favorably; for Biden, that number is a bit higher at 57 percent.

The vice presidential hopefuls run about evenly among all voters and among independents on the question of whether they "understand the problems of people like you." That is an important factor for the GOP ticket, as McCain continues to trail Obama as the candidate more in tune with the financial problems Americans face.

White married women are particularly likely to see Palin as in touch, as three-quarters said she understands their concerns. At the same time, a majority of such women do not think Palin has enough experience to be a good president. (White married women support the GOP ticket by a 20-point margin.)

Palin runs far behind Biden on another important attribute: About three-quarters of those surveyed said he understands complex issues, compared with 46 percent who said so of her.

On the eve of the presidential election in 2000, 76 percent said Al Gore had a solid grasp of hard issues; 60 percent said so of George W. Bush.

Despite Palin's slip in public assessments, the boost she has provided among some core segments of the GOP base has not faded. Enthusiasm for McCain's candidacy among Republicans, conservatives and white evangelical Protestants climbed sharply after the party's convention in St. Paul, Minn., where Palin made her debut, and it has held relatively steady since.

But even within these Republican strongholds, questions about Palin's experience are fairly common. About four in 10 conservatives and white evangelical Protestants, three in 10 Republicans and a quarter of GOP women said she does not have the necessary experience.

The Post-ABC poll was conducted by telephone Sept. 27 to 29 among a random sample of adults nationally, including interviews with 1,070 registered voters. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. Error margins for subgroups are higher.

By Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta, The Washington Post, October 2, 2008

SAN ANTONIO - Sarah Palin questioned Republican presidential candidate John McCain's decision to abandon efforts to win Michigan, a campaign move she only learned about Friday morning when she read it in the newspapers.

In an interview with Fox News Channel Friday, the Alaska governor said she was disappointed that the McCain campaign decided to stop competing in Michigan. In an indication that the vice presidential candidate had not been part of the decision, she said she had "read that this morning and I fired off a quick e-mail" questioning the move.

"Todd and I, we'd be happy to get to Michigan and walk through those plants of the car manufacturers," Palin said, referring to her husband. "We'd be so happy to get to speak to the people in Michigan who are hurting because the economy is hurting."

Palin acknowledged the GOP ticket's lackluster poll ratings in the state, but said: "I want to get back to Michigan and I want to try."

Word of the McCain campaign's decision to move staff out of Michigan and stop advertising in the state broke around midday Thursday - the same day as Palin's vice presidential debate against Democrat Joe Biden. The campaign had decided Wednesday night that the $1 million a week it was spending in Michigan wasn't worth it with internal polls showing Democratic nominee Barack Obama approaching a double-digit lead.

On Friday, Palin sought to re-establish herself as an asset for Republican John McCain's struggling presidential candidacy, branding their Democratic rivals as liberals not ready to lead in a time of crisis.

Fresh off an upbeat debate performance, Palin told a ballroom full of $1,000 donors in Dallas that McCain advisers warned her that Biden was "a skilled debater."

"Now I know what they meant," she said. "He did his best to convince us that the two most liberal members of the Senate belong in the White House. But that was a tough sell, and especially in a time of crisis for our country."

The Alaska governor's fiesty tone came as she eased back into the campaign trail. She attended two fundraisers Friday in Texas and also meet privately with Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens to discuss energy policy. Pickens, once a major Republican Party donor, is sitting out this campaign to promote a plan to expand wind power.

As a governor of Alaska, Palin has dealt with a variety of oil and gas issues. She told the Dallas donors that as vice president, "one issue I will be leading is energy independence."

The campaign has planned a series of rallies for Palin in other battlegrounds. Among the stops scheduled for the days ahead are Colorado, Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. She will also be in California this weekend for a fundraiser and rally.

Based on the schedule, the campaign appears to be relying on Palin to invigorate Republican voters in Colorado and North Carolina, states that have reliably voted Republican in past presidential elections. Obama leads in polls in Florida and Pennsylvania.

Palin is hitting the road after being sequestered for three days of debate preparation at McCain's Sedona, Ariz., compound and after interviews with ABC and CBS where she stumbled over foreign and domestic policy issues.

Palin told Fox News that she would spend more time speaking to reporters, a switch from the tightly managed media relations during the past month.

"I look forward to speaking to the media more and more every day and providing whatever access the media would want," Palin said.

Palin said she had been "annoyed" in her interviews with CBS News anchor Katie Couric and had been caught off guard when asked what newspapers and magazines she read and to name Supreme Court decisions she disagreed with - questions Palin appeared not to be able to answer.

Her responses, Palin said, were "an indication of being outside that Washington elite, outside of the media elite also."

But Palin held her own in the debate with Biden, displaying facility with some issues such as energy and comfort as an advocate for McCain and as a hard-hitting critic of Obama.

Later, in San Antonio, she let on that she was breathing a little easier now.

"Last night was fun, the debate," she told donors at the Marriott Rivercenter. "I was glad it was over when it ended."

By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press, October 3, 2008

Voters are deeply divided over the terms of the government's $700 billion economic rescue package but overwhelmingly fear that the House's rejection of the measure on Monday could deepen the country's financial woes, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.

A majority of voters see the turmoil in financial and credit markets as an economic "crisis," are guarded in their confidence that government action will resolve the situation and remain deeply pessimistic about the direction of the nation's economy. Concern about the House's rejection of the plan is widely shared across party lines.

Fluctuations on Wall Street continue to roil the presidential contest between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, the poll shows, with the economy still by far the dominant issue among voters with just five weeks to go before Election Day.

Negativity about the country's financial prospects continues to lift Obama, but he now has a narrower advantage over McCain in Post-ABC polling than he did last week. Overall, the senator from Illinois holds a slim lead in the new national poll, with likely voters dividing 50 percent for Obama and 46 percent for McCain.

In the last poll, Obama led by a nine-point margin. At that time, McCain advisers sharply criticized the results as being out of step with other surveys. Still, the new poll marks only the second time either of the candidates has reached 50 percent. Other national polls also indicate that Obama opened up a lead as the nation's economic situation deteriorated over the past two weeks.

The new survey began the night after the first presidential debate, held Friday at the University of Mississippi, and while a plurality of voters said Obama performed better than McCain, 38 percent to 24 percent, large numbers said it was essentially a tie or expressed no opinion.

Contrary to their advisers' hopes, the debate did not help either candidate deal with major vulnerabilities, in part because few voters said the performances changed their views.

Much of the debate dealt with foreign policy and national security, but Obama made no headway on the question of whether he would make a good commander in chief. As in previous polls, voters in the post-debate poll are evenly divided on his ability to manage the U.S. military -- 46 percent said he would be good in that role, while 48 percent said he would not.

The debate did not give Obama a boost on the commander-in-chief question, but he did edge up slightly on the query about his overall experience. In the new poll, a slim majority of voters said he has enough experience to be an effective president, a slight increase from the Sept. 5-7 Post-ABC poll.

For McCain, a major hindrance has been his perceived ties to the deeply unpopular Republican president. Slightly more than half of voters, 53 percent, said they think the senator from Arizona would lead the country in the same direction as President Bush, a small move up from a Post-ABC poll taken after the GOP convention early last month. Voters who see McCain's candidacy as a continuation of Bush's policies overwhelmingly back Obama.

The connection with Bush is a growing problem, as the sagging economy has added to the drag on public assessments of the president. Bush's approval rating has now dropped to an all-time low in Post-ABC polling, with 26 percent giving him positive marks for his performance and 70 percent giving him negative reviews.

Only two modern presidents -- Harry S. Truman and Richard M. Nixon -- have had lower approval ratings, and none has had higher disapproval numbers. On the economy, 22 percent said they approved of the way Bush is doing his job. That, too, is a new career low for him.

Nearly three in 10 voters singled out the president as the principal reason the country is in its current economic straits. Wall Street financial institutions and banks followed closely on the blame list. Voters also mention the government, Congress, Republicans, Democrats, overextended home buyers and others as root causes.

As for Monday's ill-fated House vote, poll respondents, by a 2 to 1 ratio, hold congressional Republicans more responsible for the rejection of the package supported by Bush, McCain, Obama and congressional leaders of both parties.

Public assessments of who is a "safe" pick for the presidency have shifted. Compared with a June poll, slightly more voters now call Obama a safe choice than said so of McCain (55 percent to 51 percent). Obama ticked up from 50 percent to 55 percent over past three months on that question, with the increase almost entirely among Democrats. McCain dropped from 57 percent to 51 percent, with independents contributing to the decline.

Almost all voters consider the current financial situation a big problem, with a majority, 52 percent, describing it as a crisis. And in a question asked of a parallel sample of randomly selected adults on Monday evening after the House's rejection, voters were also nearly unanimous in their concern that the vote would deepen the financial downturn.

In the Monday night poll, voters were evenly divided -- 45 percent in favor, 47 percent opposed -- on the economic package proposed by the administration and altered by congressional negotiators. Forty-four percent said Republicans were responsible for the House defeat, 21 percent held Democrats accountable and 17 percent said the parties were equally responsible.

One reason behind the division on the rescue plan is that few voters said it did "the right amount" for financial institutions, the economy or for "ordinary Americans." Moreover, voters split about evenly on whether the plan did too much or too little for financial firms that got into trouble, nearly half said it did not do enough to jump-start the economy and more than six in 10 said it did not adequately protect average people.

After the House vote and a nearly 800-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average, voters expressed only tepid confidence in the government's ability to solve the problem, with 51 percent saying they were confident government action could prevent the situation from getting worse, and 47 percent saying they were not.

With the economy remaining the campaign's top issue, Obama continues to get a boost from perceived advantages on the topic among the full poll sample. He holds a large lead among the 51 percent of voters who prioritize economic issues and has a clear edge as the candidate more in tune with the voters' financial concerns. Obama also still has a double-digit advantage on fixing the problems with major financial institutions.

Obama trails McCain among white voters by 13 percentage points in the new poll -- similar to Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry's deficit in 2004 -- but runs significantly better among those who are pessimistic about the country's and their family's economic future.

But alongside Obama's edge on the economy, McCain has made small but consistent gains on foreign policy following the presidential debate, regaining ground he had temporarily ceded to his rival.

McCain has now nudged ahead as the candidate better able to handle international affairs, the war in Iraq, terrorism and an unexpected major crisis.

McCain also now runs evenly with Obama on the question of who would do more to work with members of the other party in Congress next year. In late August, Obama held a 12-point advantage in that area, but now the two are nearly tied, with 47 percent saying McCain would do a better job dealing with both Democrats and Republicans and 45 percent saying Obama. Most of McCain's gains on this question came from Republicans, but independents also tipped toward him.

Obama continues to hold sizable advantages on bringing change to Washington (he is up 28 points on that front), topping 60 percent for the first time. Obama also has large advantages on having the better personality and temperament (up 23 points) and, as noted, understanding people's economic problems (up 19 points).

In the race for the White House, McCain and Obama are running evenly among men, with Obama up seven points among women. Each wins about nine in 10 voters from his own party, which gives Obama a small advantage because more Americans identify themselves as Democrats than Republicans.

In the current poll, the candidates split independents about evenly -- 48 percent for McCain, 45 percent for Obama. Independents, one of the keys to the outcome of the election, have shifted back and forth between the two over the past few months.

Interest continues to edge higher, with 58 percent of all voters now paying "very close" attention. That is more than twice the level of intense focus as there was at this point in the 2000 election.

The poll was conducted by telephone Sept. 27 to 29, among a random national sample of 1,271 adults. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. Error margins for subgroups are higher. Some questions were asked of a parallel sample of 520 randomly selected adults on Sept. 29; those results have a four-point error margin.

By Dan Balz and Jon Cohen, The Washington Post, October 1, 2008

With Thursday's vice presidential debate approaching, ex-aides and opponents of the Alaska governor recall her skill at jabbing with a smile, even if she wasn't always focused on learning the issues.

ANCHORAGE -- When she appeared for a candidate's forum in front of a room filled with unionized Alaskan electrical workers during her run for governor in early October 2006, Sarah Palin was woefully unprepared. When the union members grilled her on labor policy, Palin faltered.

Afterward, a furious Palin cursed in anger and berated her staff, recalled two former senior campaign aides who blamed her unwillingness to bone up on workplace issues for the blunder.

"The political landscape here is littered with people who have underestimated Sarah Palin," said Eric Croft, a former state representative who ran for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2006 and appeared with Palin during several early forums.

Palin's split-personality debate persona -- mirrored in her confident speech to the Republican convention in Minneapolis in early September and in a series of wobbly performances in recent television interviews -- poses a challenge for her Democratic opponent, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, as Thursday's nationally telecast vice presidential debate in St. Louis approaches.

Biden could face trouble, Alaskan political observers said, if he takes Palin too lightly. But he also has to take care not to be overly aggressive against a candidate who radiates telegenic appeal.

"She has a Reagan-like ability to win over audiences. But for someone who cares about issues and facts, it was rather startling to see her gloss over important questions," said Andrew Halcro, an Alaska businessman who ran as an independent candidate for governor against Palin.

Biden, the garrulous Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, is also at ease on camera and often showed his command of foreign policy issues and his flashing wit during a string of Democratic Party presidential primary debates in 2007.

But he has stumbled before. A debate gaffe ended his presidential hopes in August 1987, when he used an anecdote about a family hampered by lack of economic opportunity -- without crediting the source, British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock.

For its part, Sen. John McCain's campaign appears to be taking no chances that Palin will prepare properly. It flew her Monday to McCain's Arizona ranch to cram with a coterie of the GOP presidential candidate's advisors.

As she began her run for governor of Alaska, Palin repeatedly proved difficult to prep for a debate, recalled her two former political aides, who had pivotal roles during her campaign but declined to be identified because of their continuing involvement in Alaska politics.

Palin, the former aides said, had a sharply limited attention span for absorbing the facts and policy angles required for all-topics debate preparation. Staffers were rarely able to get her to sit for more than half an hour of background work at a time before her concentration waned, hindered by cellphone calls and family affairs. "We were always fighting for her attention," said one of the aides.

In mid-October 2006, Palin's staffers saw their worries justified in the first political forum of the campaign season, an event at Anchorage's 49 Supper Club, where candidates unveiled their stump speeches before a room filled with political players. The former Wasilla mayor breezed through an upbeat speech about "taking back Alaska" but struggled during a question-and-answer session.

"To her credit, she gave a lot of 'I don't knows,' " one former aide recalled. "But it was clear she didn't start out with a great range of knowledge about Alaskan affairs."

In the weeks that followed, Palin's senior campaign aides took care not to let her repeat the dismal performance. "I was always frustrated because 30 minutes before game time, I'd want to say, 'Let's turn off the phone and lock the door. And please calm down,' " one of her former aides said.

But as time went on, Palin increasingly managed to zero in on the policy issues set before her during debate preparations, and her comfort level rose dramatically. During two final debates broadcast by Alaska public television and an Anchorage news station, Palin appeared to ace her performances, deftly crystallizing her talking points for voters.

"If you can sit her down, she has a talent for listening to a policy presentation that is so boring it would bring tears to your eyes," the aide said. "Then -- boom -- she will nail it down to its essence."

Palin often toted index cards when she walked out in front of the cameras, cribbing from them when the cameras were on her rivals. "She'd carry these cards with her like she was cramming for a test," Halcro said.

Her debate strategists also warned Palin not to stray onto such hot-button topics as creationism and same-sex marriage. On questionnaires sent to socially conservative activists, Palin backed "intelligent design" alternatives to the theory of evolution and opposed nontraditional unions. But she managed to avoid those subjects during most of the debates.

Palin remained so low-key that even her pollster, David Dittman, confessed he was unaware of her strong Christian conservative tenets. "I didn't know what she believed in," he said. "We never had any discussions about it, and from our polls, Alaska voters had the same impression."

Palin saved her most devastating riposte for the final question of the debate, when Persily asked the three candidates whether they would hire their opponents for a state job.

Knowles and Halcro offered halting jokes. But when it was Palin's turn, she pounced.

Smiling at Halcro, who recited reams of statistics by rote, Palin observed that the businessman "would make the most awesome statistician the state could ever look for."

As the debate audience laughed, Palin pivoted to Knowles, who had owned an Anchorage restaurant. "Do they need a chef down in Juneau?" Palin asked, smiling as she twisted the verbal knife. "I know Mr. Knowles is really good at that."

Two years on, Halcro and Knowles admit they are still baffled by how their mastery of policy and state issues was trumped by Palin's breezy confidence and feel-good answers.

"When you try to prove she doesn't know anything, you lose, because audiences are enraptured by her," Halcro said. "And her biting comments give you a sense of how competitive she is. Anybody who doesn't take her seriously does so at their peril."





By Stephen Braun and Tom Hamburger, Los Angeles Times, October 1, 2008

The high-stakes event comes at a critical time. Sarah Palin needs to shore up her deteriorating image, while Joe Biden needs to engage middle America. Both candidates, above all, need to do no harm.

Sarah Palin must sound authoritative and authentic. Joe Biden must sound informed and inoffensive. Both need to reach through the television to connect with middle America.

With Wall Street gyrating and voter interest skyrocketing, tonight's televised contest stands as an oddity: a vice presidential debate that could actually matter.

The stakes could hardly be greater, particularly for the Republicans. A host of polls released Wednesday showed voters moving toward Democrat Barack Obama over Republican John McCain nationally and in key electoral states.

The debate arrives at a knife's-edge moment for Alaska Gov. Palin, who has seen her early popularity among some voters ebb under a cascade of probing news stories and halting television interviews. The session, aired from Washington University in St. Louis, will be the nation's first extended look at Palin's ability to think on her feet.

Any debate is a high-wire act, in this case 90 minutes of close-up camera time in which a whiny sigh, eye roll or burbling misstatement can upend a political career.

For the vice presidential nominee, there is the added pressure that a mistake will reflect poorly on the running mate.

"First and foremost," said Democratic strategist Chris Lehane, "vice presidential candidates must abide by the political Hippocratic oath: Do no harm."

Particularly harmful, Lehane and others say, are mistakes that play into underlying voter concerns: if Palin were to stumble, for example, or if Biden were to come off as patronizing.

"People really look at these choices as another window on the decision-making and philosophy at the top of the ticket," said Diana B. Carlin, a professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas who has surveyed political debates since 1980.

For Palin, the imperative is to reverse the slide. Her multipart interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric prompted even some conservatives to question her readiness.

The candidate whose popularity flourished after her convention speech -- delivered with the aid of a teleprompter -- offered in the interview what appeared to be shards of disconnected talking points.

Tonight will either confirm that image or allow Palin to begin crafting a new one.

"The picture that we've been given thus far is something of a caricature," said Whit Ayres, a Republican consultant. He said that Palin should accent her rationale for being on the ticket.

"She doesn't have to be an expert in the politics of Kosovo or Georgia to be viewed as a competent vice presidential choice," Ayres said. "What they are going to be looking for is her set of values, her sympathies, her orientation to the world, who she connects with."

For Biden, the advice is much the same. Although he has spent three decades in the Senate, he must take care not to bludgeon viewers with his knowledge.

Biden, too, has had his share of gaffes recently -- misstating the Democratic policy on the use of clean coal, among other things. Probably pounded into Biden's head during debate prep: Ignore Palin, cut the Senate-speak and emphasize blue-collar roots.

"So long as he's not Joe Biden, Senate Foreign Relations chair, and is Joey from Scranton, the better for the ticket," Lehane said.

Even debate veterans were having a hard time predicting the outcome.

"This is reality TV . . . and anything can happen," said Republican consultant Nelson Warfield.





By Cathleen Decker, Los Angeles Times, October 2, 2008

John McCain's running mate still appeals to many on a personal level, but other voters have grown wary of her experience.

When Sarah Palin was introduced five weeks ago as John McCain's running mate, her impact seemed seismic. With her injection of youth and energy to the Republican ticket, McCain's advisors predicted she would be a strong draw to women -- particularly independents and supporters of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton who were reluctant to back Barack Obama.

That seemed plausible as the Alaska governor attracted large crowds to rallies and was credited with a surge in the polls for McCain.

But as she faces her biggest test, tonight's debate with Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, Palin's star power appears to have faded. She dropped out of the headlines as the financial crisis captured attention, and her shaky performance in interviews with CBS anchor Katie Couric was widely seen as a potential problem for the McCain campaign.

Palin is still enormously popular among Republicans and continues to stoke enthusiasm in the party's base, but as voters learn about her, many have started to view her unfavorably. After the GOP convention, more than half of the voters surveyed by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press said she was qualified to be president. In a Pew poll released Wednesday, just 37% said she would be ready to take over for McCain.

And polls now show little evidence to support the McCain campaign's hope that she will attract female swing voters in significant numbers.

A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll last month found that Palin held no particular sway with women. Among independent voters, she was more popular with men: 44% said they were more likely to vote for McCain because of Palin, whereas just 31% of women said so. The poll also found just a quarter of Clinton's former supporters were more inclined to choose the Arizona senator because of his running mate.

Irene Holcomb, a retiree from Duluth, Minn., is an independent voter who favored Clinton but now backs Obama. Initially, she said, she saw Palin as "the perfect woman," but she has watched her interviews and now says she "comes off like she really doesn't what she's talking about."

Like Holcomb, a number of female Clinton supporters surveyed said they were concerned about Palin's qualifications. Nearly all singled out her lack of foreign policy experience.

Kelly Knuth, a 48-year-old Democrat and Clinton supporter from Proctor, W.Va., was just the kind of undecided voter the McCain campaign hoped to win with Palin's selection.

Palin seemed refreshingly "common" and "down-to-earth," Knuth said -- a contrast to Obama and McCain, whom she views as removed from the economic struggles of working people. Yet her admiration for Palin wasn't enough to tip her toward McCain.

"If she had some experience, yes, I think she could do something," Knuth said.

For Karen Molesworth, an independent voter, her concern about whether Palin would be able to handle the Iraq war is personal -- her grandson has served four tours in Iraq.

"She talks about Russia, but come on, they said she just got a passport," said 67-year-old Molesworth, who is from Port Huron, Mich., and supports Obama. "If Palin had to step in -- oh, God, she'd better have some good people behind her."

Such negative impressions of Palin are on the upswing after her unsteady interviews and unflattering news reports about her record, including her decision not to cooperate with the investigation into her firing of Alaska's public safety commissioner.

In polling by Pew between Saturday and Monday, 4 in 10 voters said they viewed her unfavorably, compared with 32% in a poll taken two weeks earlier.

Despite the potential limits of her appeal, Palin has exhibited a rare ability to establish an emotional connection with Republican women who flock to her rallies. In interviews with more than 20, few mentioned specific issues or shared ideology to explain their support -- more often they described Palin as "real," "gutsy" and "tenacious."

Rutgers University political science professor Ross K. Baker noted that Palin "could be anybody's neighbor."

"What flows from that is the belief that she may be uniquely able to understand the problems of ordinary Americans," he said.

Her Everyman style has drawn comparisons to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and 70% of voters surveyed in the latest Pew poll said Palin was "down-to-earth." In an interview Tuesday with talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Palin described herself as "a normal Joe Six-Pack American."

At a recent rally in Virginia, Pam Arledge, a 45-year-old mother of five, noted that she and Palin were both PTA moms and "look just alike."

"She gets up, takes care of the kids and goes to work. I'm, like, 'Oh, my God! It's like me doing it.' It's like I'm living through her. She is going inspire an entire generation of women," said Arledge, who lives in Spotsylvania, Va.

Arledge shrugged off their ideological differences, on abortion, for example: "I'm a centrist, so I don't care what her social views are."

Ronda Bryce, a 46-year-old preschool administrator from Haymarket, Va., said the Alaska governor "seems like somebody you could shop with and have intelligent conversation with. It wouldn't always be about the shoes, but the shoes would be good," she said with a laugh.

To Debbie Keller, a 51-year-old homemaker from Littlestown, Pa., who attended a McCain-Palin rally in Lancaster, Pa., the debate over Palin's credentials seemed ridiculous, since Palin is already juggling a governorship and a campaign with her duties as a mother of five children, including a baby with Down syndrome and a pregnant teenage daughter.

"I have six kids, so I think she has a lot of experience to do it," she said. "If you can deal with the problems in your family and your own children, you're not going to get overwhelmed."





By Maeve Reston, Los Angeles Times, October 1, 2008

With a single-word response, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. surprised and amused his listeners in the first Democratic primary debate, in April 2007. He was asked if he could be disciplined on the world stage and restrain his legendary loquaciousness.

"Yes," he said.

No one expected Mr. Biden to stop there, but he did, leaving an expectant silence, until the audience caught the joke and burst into laughter.

He showed less restraint in a CNN/YouTube debate a few months later, when a gun owner asked where the candidates stood on gun control, saying he wanted to know if his "babies" would be safe. "This is my baby," the man said on the video, showing off his Bushmaster AR-15.

"I'll tell you what," Mr. Biden replied. "If that is his baby, he needs help."

The audience applauded enthusiastically, but Mr. Biden did not stop there.

He went on to deride the questioner, saying he incriminated himself because the man said he bought the gun while it was banned, then he questioned the man's stability. "I don't know that he is mentally qualified to own that gun," he said in a gratuitous aside.

The Democrats held 26 debates during the primary season. Mr. Biden, of Delaware, participated in 14 of them before he dropped out of the race Jan. 3, after he came in fifth in the Iowa caucuses. That would seem to give him a huge advantage going into Thursday's vice-presidential debate with Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, who has never debated on the national stage.

But his off-putting remark to the gun owner suggests that perhaps his "yes" answer to the question about self-discipline had been premature and that there are perils ahead for Mr. Biden on Thursday - both because of his tendency to go too far and the hazards of debating a woman.

A review of Mr. Biden's debate performances shows him to be deeply knowledgeable across a range of topics, reflecting his nearly four decades in Washington, where he is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Mr. Biden's answers tend to gush forth and his voice is raspy, which lends his arguments an air of urgency. He also uses assertive phrases like, "the truth is," or "folks, let me tell you," which grab listeners by the lapel.

At the June 3 debate in New Hampshire, for example, he was asked to defend his vote to continue financing the war in Iraq, a vote sought by the White House and criticized by fellow Democrats as an open-ended commitment to the war. All the other Democrats on stage voted against it, including Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the presidential nominee who has picked Mr. Biden as his running mate.

"I love these guys who tell you they're going to stop the war," Mr. Biden said of his fellow Democrats. "Let me tell you straight up the truth. The truth of the matter is, the only one that's emboldened the enemy has been George Bush by his policies, not us funding the war."

One danger for Mr. Biden on Thursday is that his habit of speaking authoritatively, of saying he possesses the truth, will come across as overbearing or condescending, particularly toward someone like Ms. Palin, who lacks his credentials. To try to guard against sounding sexist, he is sparring in practice sessions with Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm of Michigan, who is playing the role of Ms. Palin.

The only other time a woman has appeared on the debate stage as part of a major-party ticket was in 1984, when Geraldine A. Ferraro, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, faced Vice President George Bush. One exchange might offer Mr. Biden a good lesson.

Mr. Bush had said, "Let me help you with the difference, Mrs. Ferraro, between Iran and the embassy in Lebanon." Ms. Ferraro instantly highlighted what she perceived as condescension: "I almost resent, Vice President Bush, your patronizing attitude that you have to teach me about foreign policy."

Mr. Bush underscored one of the hazards of debating a woman when he later gloated into an open microphone, "We tried to kick a little ass last night."

The risk may be even greater for Mr. Biden. His innate exuberance and gusto in speaking without stopping for air can make him sound like he is clubbing his points - and his opponent.

He loves railing against the Republicans; he did so most memorably in an October debate in Philadelphia, when he said of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11."

The line was a huge hit, but again, Mr. Biden did not let it rest. Although the question had nothing to do with Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Biden milked it for 43 seconds more.

Other perils for Mr. Biden are unrelated to Ms. Palin.

He has a tendency to blurt out whatever is on his mind. Even as the vice-presidential nominee, Mr. Biden has veered off script, creating a series of flaps in recent days, from opposing the bailout of the American International Group, which Mr. Obama supported, to labeling as "terrible" an Obama campaign commercial against Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee.

Mr. Biden describes himself as blunt.

He was asked at a Dec. 13 debate in Iowa about whether some of his earlier comments - that Mr. Obama "is articulate and bright and clean," for example - reflected a discomfort with the subject of race.

"It may be possible because I speak so bluntly that people misunderstand," Mr. Biden said, defending his commitment to civil rights. Mr. Biden looked sad as Mr. Obama himself stepped in to vouch for him.

One of the consequences of a long time in the Senate is a long record of votes for which one can be held accountable, just as a consequence of a long primary can be a long record of attacks on allies. On Thursday, Mr. Biden may have to answer for both. See the debate of June 3, 2007, for how he twisted himself in knots over a vote for a 700-mile-long fence along the border with Mexico. And see Mr. Biden's statement that votes against financing the Iraq war by other Democratic candidates, including Mr. Obama, amount to "cutting off support that will save the lives of thousands of American troops."

Joseph A. Pika, a political scientist at the University of Delaware who has observed Mr. Biden over much of his career, said the senator was prone to making broad declarations - "We've got to level with the American people!" - then expounding with lengthy elaborations.

"He likes to hold forth," Dr. Pika said. "Being an effective debater will require him to be disciplined and focused and to make his points punchier than is customarily his style."

It was warmer than the tepid backing Clinton has expressed in recent days while making the rounds on late night and Sunday news shows promoting his philanthropic summit. Words of praise for Republican John McCain fairly rolled off his tongue -- "a great man" who "stood up to his party." But when it came to Obama's attributes, "much closer to what Hillary and I want" was about as good as it got.

Such low energy, coming from one of the most gifted campaigners of modern politics, was so apparent that "Saturday Night Live" spoofed it last week with Darrell Hammond as Clinton: "Look . . . I'm not gonna trash John McCain just 'cause he's a Republican or a war hero or a great friend who's hilarious and cool."

Clinton's recent appearance on "Late Show With David Letterman," where he seemed to talk more about his wife's dead candidacy than Obama's live one, prompted a fit from the next guest, comedian Chris Rock: "Is it me, or he [Clinton] didn't want to say the name 'Barack Obama'? Hillary ain't running."

On Wednesday, though, Clinton seemed to walk a line between gutter politics and the above-the-fray wisdom expected of a former president -- a posture he forsook in the fierce primary battle, only to see his poll numbers drop.

Not once in his 22-minute speech did Clinton mention John McCain or his vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, though he took a swipe at the Alaska governor whose readiness for high office has been hotly debated of late by talking heads on both sides. Clinton's praise was effusive when he talked of the lower half of the Democratic ticket, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, whom he called "a superb choice."

"He's got a better vice presidential partner," Clinton said of Obama in a line that brought cheers.

It was the first of two stops in Florida (Fort Pierce was also on the schedule), with more planned in other battleground states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Nevada. Clinton urged the crowds of several thousand to knock on doors for Obama. "You don't have to say one bad word about Sen. Obama's opponent. You just have to tell them the truth," he said.

While critics might interpret his restraint as lack of enthusiasm, others in attendance were appreciative. "Beating the heck out of each other gets old fast," said David Barnes, 18, a University of Central Florida freshman who remembers the Clinton years as a time when "nothing bad happened."

In a crisp gray suit, waving happily from a silver Suburban as he departed, the former president seemed in his element, having laced his speech with the "feel your pain" empathy that served him well in two successful runs. "People are waking up with their guts in a knot. . . . Sooner or later, you won't be able to buy a refrigerator on an installment plan."

"He spoke directly to me," said Karla Fountain, a 37-year-old photographer. "My husband and I are in trouble with our mortgage; my small business has taken a slump."

The perceived undercurrent of resistance in Clinton has infuriated some Democrats, who suspect he is undermining Obama so that his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, can try again in four years. But Clinton's demeanor may be less an act of sabotage than a reluctance to turn history's page.

"If Obama wins, Clinton is no longer the big dog of Democratic politics. The Clinton era ends," said Tom Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "That's got to smart a little bit."





By Faye Fiore, Los Angeles Times, October 2, 2008

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama has surged to a seven-point lead over John McCain one month before the presidential election, lifted by voters who think the Democrat is better suited to lead the nation through its sudden financial crisis, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that underscores the mounting concerns of some McCain backers.

Likely voters now back Obama 48-41 percent over McCain, a dramatic shift from an AP-GfK survey that gave the Republican a slight edge nearly three weeks ago, before Wall Street collapsed and sent ripples across worldwide markets. On top of that, unrelated surveys show Obama beating McCain in several battlegrounds, including Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Iowa - four states critical in the state-by-state fight for the presidency.

Several GOP strategists close to McCain's campaign privately fret that his chances for victory are starting to slip away.

These Republicans, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid angering the campaign, point to several factors: Obama's gains nationally and in traditionally GOP states, no McCain boost from the first debate, McCain's struggles with economic issues as the financial crisis has unfolded and deepening public skepticism about his running mate, Sarah Palin.

They said McCain's options for shaking up the race are essentially limited to game-changing performances in the final presidential debates or in Palin's vice presidential debate Thursday night with Joe Biden. Short of that, they said, McCain can do little but hope Obama stumbles or an outside event breaks the GOP nominee's way.

Democrats hope Obama is starting to build a lasting lead.

"We have a light optimism," said David Redlawsk, a delegate to the Democratic National Convention who teaches political science at the University of Iowa. "We've already learned in the last several weeks that we can be whipsawed back very, very quickly."

Not all Republican insiders are pessimistic.

Obama's failure to achieve a double-digit lead and maintain it "has given a lot of hope to Republicans," GOP pollster Whit Ayres said. Yet he also allowed, "You can't have a playing field that leans this heavily toward the Democrats and not be nervous."

The AP-GfK poll shows McCain faces substantial hurdles.

With the perilous financial situation at the forefront of voters' minds, 60 percent in the survey say it's more important to them to choose a president who would make the right economic decisions than a commander in chief who would make the right decisions on national security. Obama leads among economic voters, with 63 percent support, while McCain is ahead among security voters, with 73 percent.

Obama led McCain on the questions of who would best improve the economy and handle the financial crisis. The Democrat also was seen as more likely than the Republican to understand how the crisis effects the average person.

As the two senators prepared to vote late Wednesday on the administration's $700 billion bailout plan, 16 percent of likely voters said they thought McCain hurt negotiations over the proposal when he bolted back to Washington last week to get involved. Just 5 percent thought Obama did damage when he returned after a summons by President Bush to attend a White House meeting on the crisis.

Adding to McCain's woes, just 25 percent of likely voters say Palin has the right experience to be president if needed, a huge drop from 41 percent in the previous poll last month. She posted an enormous loss in confidence among Republicans; three in four had called her experienced enough before, but not even half say that now.

"If she was running the helm, she wouldn't know what she's doing," said Caitlyn Pardue, 60, a Republican from Rohnert Park, Calif., who decided last week that she probably would vote for Obama after determining that Palin "doesn't have the breadth of knowledge."

Outwardly, McCain's campaign expresses optimism, and aides say they expect the race to reset itself several more times.

But privately some advisers acknowledge the difficult seas he is trying to navigate as the economy dominates the race.

Seeking traction, McCain sought to change the story line as the week began by questioning Obama's character, particularly during a crisis.

"A vote for Sen. Obama will leave this country at risk," McCain said in a scathing speech.

Efforts also were under way Wednesday that suggested McCain and the Republican National Committee would start ramping up TV advertising - and going on the air in more media markets - to close the spending gap in Florida, Missouri and other key states. Industry officials say Obama is shelling out $13 million this week compared with $11 million by McCain and the RNC combined.

Meanwhile, it appears Obama may be padding his edge in the Electoral College vote count in battleground states.

Polls show he has started pulling away from McCain in pivotal vote-rich states that Democrat John Kerry won four years ago and that McCain has made targets this year, including Michigan and Pennsylvania. Surveys also show that Obama is a few percentage points or more ahead in Ohio and Florida, two critical states that Bush won four years ago and that McCain must retain to have any hope of winning the White House.

And, Obama is in strong position in longtime Republican states that are nontraditional battlegrounds, including Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina.

The AP-GfK poll involved telephone interviews of a nationwide sample of 1,160 adults, including 808 likely voters, from Saturday through Tuesday. Interviews were conducted on both landline and cell phones. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points, 3.4 percentage points for likely voters.

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press, October 2, 2008

The fundamentals of the economy may not be so strong, but Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has crafted her own reply to John McCain's fumbled pep talk earlier this month.

"Our economy is filled with resilient, hardworking, entrepreneurial people," who will start the businesses that will drive a recovery from the meltdown on Wall Street, Clinton told a breakfast meeting of the Long Island Association yesterday. "But the next weeks will be critical."

Clinton spoke just before the surprise failure of the House of Representatives to pass a $700-billion financial industry bailout measure, which sent markets on a record tumble. Last night she urged her congressional colleagues to put their differences aside, saying, "This is not a time when doing nothing will see us through."

Clinton told the LIA that the rescue bill has been improved and that, though "I despise it," she would vote for it. But the catastrophe has revealed a "deep culture of debt" threatening the country, she said.

"People not just on Wall Street but on Main Street have been living beyond our means for quite some time," Clinton said, pointing to the $9,000 in credit card debt held by the average American household. "A lot of people think that's going to be the next big shoe to fall."

Clinton said she plans to file legislation to create an entity like the Home Owners Loan Corporation, a New Deal agency created to refinance homes to prevent foreclosure.

She also said she'll be looking into reports of apparent disability abuse by Long Island Rail Road workers, something she called "a shocker to a lot of people."

Responding to a question from the audience, Clinton was unusually candid about the role of sexism in her primary campaign.

"Speaking from my own experience ... there are all kinds of hidden biases against women in high positions," she said, adding that Laura Tyson, a top adviser to former President Bill Clinton, had shown her several studies to back that up.

In one, job resumes with gender-neutral names were downgraded when the evaluator received cues applicants were female. In another, people were put to work on computers that froze, and heard either a male or female voice deliver the error message.

"People got so much more worked up with the female voice," she said. "Why? I think it goes back millennia. Who knows why? But it's there."

And in her own primary races, Clinton said, "in almost every exit poll a higher percentage of people expressed concern about a woman president than about a black president. It's unfortunate that anybody expressed concerns about either. But gender is so much part of the backdrop.

"We just have to keep plugging away at it," she said.





By ELIZABETH MOORE, Newsday, September 30, 2008

He ends a confusing and dramatic side trip to Washington that left supporters angry and critics wondering.

WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential nominee John McCain returns to the trail today after a dramatic but rocky four-day detour that upended his campaign, upset supporters and gave new ammunition to critics who question his judgment.

McCain will appear at a rally in Columbus, Ohio, in hopes of regaining the momentum he lost when he abruptly canceled campaign events and returned here Thursday to try to broker a $700-billion bailout of the crippled financial industry.

The Arizona senator's unilateral cease-fire carried a clear cost, aides now concede, acknowledging that polls show Democratic nominee Barack Obama with a widening lead. Pulling most of McCain's TV ads off the air for several days also left him "naked" to Obama's broadsides, the aides said.

Some McCain supporters question why he made his own campaign hostage to a highly charged legislative process that he did not control. He does not sit on a Senate committee that is directly involved with the crisis, and he became inextricably linked to a Wall Street bailout that is unpopular with many voters.

Worse, McCain's campaign assumed an air of barely controlled chaos for four days as frustrated staffers tore up schedules, scrapped speeches and rallies, and scrambled to make contingency plans that seemed to change hour by hour.

"It was all very dramatic, but maybe the American public is tired of drama after the last eight years," said John Weaver, McCain's former campaign manager. "John needs to demonstrate he has a steady hand. He needs to be a bit more measured."

Supporters also criticized McCain's call last week to cancel the first presidential debate with Obama unless negotiators struck a bailout deal by Friday night. McCain backed down at the last minute and agreed to participate without a deal, but he departed Washington so suddenly Friday afternoon that he left most of his traveling press behind.

After arriving in Mississippi, he decided to return to the capital immediately after the debate. His late-night flight landed at 3:15 a.m. Saturday. Later that day, he made 17 phone calls from his campaign office to White House and congressional leaders, but did not take part in the late-night negotiations that finally hammered out the proposed accord.

McCain also did not head to the Senate floor Saturday to vote on a $634-billion bill to fund the government for the next five months. He had denounced the measure during the debate because it was packed with more than 2,000 "earmarks," pet projects sought by lawmakers for their home districts and states.

The bill also lifted a long-term congressional ban on offshore oil drilling and included billions of dollars to subsidize loans to the auto industry. McCain strongly supports lifting the drilling ban and providing federal aid to the auto giants.

Appearing Sunday on ABC's "This Week," McCain said he had been too busy "working on all the other stuff" to cast a vote. Asked if he would have voted against it, McCain said he would have tried to cut the "outrageous pork-barrel spending" in the bill, but "probably would have ended up voting for it."

Obama, who campaigned Saturday in North Carolina and Virginia, also missed the vote.

McCain also defended his decision to become so personally involved in the bailout debate. "I did the best that I could," he said. "I came back because I wasn't going to phone it in. And America's in a crisis of almost unprecedented proportions. I should be doing whatever little I can to help this process."

His running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, offered stronger support for his actions. "I'm glad that John McCain's voice was heard," she told reporters during a stop at a coffee shop in Philadelphia.

Palin will join McCain for the rally in Ohio. She then heads to McCain's desert compound in Sedona, Ariz., where she will spend three days preparing for her debate Thursday in St. Louis with Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Tucker Bounds, a McCain spokesman, was uncertain whether McCain would return to vote on the bailout bill. "It's impossible to know until the vote has been announced," he said.

Obama, appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," argued that he deserved more credit than McCain for the bailout agreement.

Like McCain, he attended an economic summit at the White House on Thursday and spoke by phone regularly over the last two weeks with Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and congressional leaders.

Obama said he helped ensure that the accord provides increased oversight, relief for homeowners facing foreclosure, and other provisions to protect taxpayers. "I was pushing very hard and involved in shaping those provisions," he said.

Later, at a rally in Detroit, the Democrat assailed what he described as McCain's erratic response to the nation's financial turmoil, an unsubtle attempt to suggest his competitor may have the wrong temperament to be president.

"That's why his first response to the greatest financial meltdown in generations was a Katrina-like response," Obama told the crowd, alluding to Bush administration's disastrously slow response to 2005 hurricane that devastated the Gulf Coast.

"He sort of stood there and said, 'The fundamentals of the economy are strong,' that's why he's been shifting positions this last two weeks looking for photo ops, trying to figure out what to say and what we need to do," Obama added.

Joe Lieberman, the independent senator from Connecticut who is a close McCain ally, said Obama's reference to Katrina was "outrageous" and praised McCain's attempt to bring a bipartisan consensus in Washington.

"I honestly don't think this would have happened in as timely a way if Sen. McCain had not come back and been the bridge-builder he always has been," Lieberman said in a conference call to reporters.

McCain aides cast their candidate's response to the financial crisis as a display of presidential-style leadership at a time of crisis. "Barack Obama was content to phone it in," Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's top economic advisor, said in the same call.

But in pressing so publicly for a bailout deal and attaching his imprimatur to it, McCain has alienated some of the GOP conservatives who had cheered his selection of Palin to the ticket.

David Keene, head of the American Conservative Union, said some of McCain's responses over the last 10 days were "goofy" and "just don't make a whole lot of sense."

"There's a cooling among conservative Republicans toward him since the convention" early this month, Keene added.

At various times, McCain has called for a study commission, advocated firing the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, proposed a new government agency and refused to back House Republicans who sought to shift more of the bailout cost to banks.

Matt Kibbe, president of the conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks, said he had hoped McCain either would oppose the bailout deal or propose a meaningful alternative.

"His message has been pretty muddled, and the stunt coming back to Washington basically . . . made him just another senator at a table with everyone else," Kibbe said.

Todd Harris, a former McCain aide, said the GOP candidate "took a hit this week," but the drama of the moment was likely to pass. "We still have a long way to go, and it's still a very competitive race," he said.





By Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, September 29, 2008

Obama has built one of the most formidable political operations the state has ever seen, and party registration is up. Even so, the presidential race there remains a dead heat.

RENO -- By just about any measure, now is a fine time to be a Democrat in Nevada.

Barack Obama has built one of the most formidable political operations the state has ever seen. Party registration is soaring. The Republican governor, Jim Gibbons, may be the most unpopular state executive in the country.

"All Obama needs is to get a third of those new Democrats and those numbers turn around," said Eric Herzik, who teaches political science at the University of Nevada, Reno.

But the numbers tell only part of the story in the nation's westernmost battleground.

Nevada is a state with a broad libertarian streak, an aversion to taxes, affection for guns and open contempt for its major landlord, the federal government, which controls 90% of state land. All of that makes it tough for a Democrat to compete statewide -- even one who isn't black and with an odd-sounding name.

Given those pluses and minuses, there may be no better test of Obama's campaign strategy than here in Nevada, a state that has gone with the winner in all but two presidential elections over the last century.

To win the White House, Obama hopes to dramatically boost the number of voters in November, pulling in casual participants as well as those -- particularly young people -- who have never cast a presidential ballot.

It is a calculated risk; one advantage for McCain, here and elsewhere, is that Republicans tend to be much more certain to show up on election day.

"Democrats have done a tremendous job increasing registration," said Chuck Muth, a GOP strategist in Carson City. "The big question is whether they'll be able to turn those people out."

The answer could depend on people like Lori O'Neil. The 52-year-old single mother earns minimum wage overseeing housekeeping at Elko's Motel 6. She skipped the last two presidential elections but has registered this time to vote for Obama. The economy -- "tough times . . . rough for everybody," she said -- was a big reason.

"Food. Gas. Everything goes up, and it just gets harder and harder every day," O'Neil said, leaning over a wooden barricade at an Obama rally this month in Elko. The Democrat, she said, "seems to be for us poor people out there."

To ensure that O'Neil and others like her make it to the polls, the Obama campaign has built perhaps the largest turnout operation in Nevada history. In the past, Democrats tended to rely on organized labor to handle their grass-roots and get-out-the-vote efforts. That worked well in Las Vegas and Clark County, where building trades and the Culinary Union, representing tens of thousands of casino workers, enjoy considerable clout.

But Republicans often made up the difference by winning handily in Washoe County, which includes Reno, and swamping the Democrats in Nevada's 15 other counties, known collectively as "the rurals." Bush carried some of those counties by 3 to 1 or better in 2000 and 2004.

This time, the Obama campaign is counting on labor to supplement its organizing efforts. The campaign has opened 14 state offices, hired about 100 paid staffers and recruited more than 3,500 volunteers, many trained in neighbor-to-neighbor outreach.

The McCain campaign has opened nine offices. It will not discuss staff levels. "At the end of the day, we'll be fully staffed with everything we need in place," said McCain spokesman Rick Gorka, who reported a surge in volunteers after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin joined the Republican ticket.

Democrats started with a big organizational edge as a result of the presidential caucuses in January, which were a major event in the party's nominating fight. The campaign was ugly -- there were attack ads and court fights -- and the result was a split decision, with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York winning the most votes and Obama claiming the most delegates. But the caucuses produced a huge turnout by Nevada standards -- 116,000 compared with 8,500 four years ago -- and created a strong foundation for November.

In Washoe County, for instance, Democrats have narrowed the GOP's long-standing registration edge to about 2,300 voters, compared with a GOP lead of 14,500 in the last presidential race. Registration continues until mid-October. Obama plans to stop in Reno today.

Republicans, by contrast, have been in disarray. The caucuses, pushed forward to coincide with the Democratic contest, drew only about a third as many participants; McCain finished third behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

This summer, the national party had to step in to ensure a pro-McCain delegation was seated at the convention in St. Paul, Minn. (Some Republicans fret McCain could lose Nevada if Paul supporters stay mad.)

For all his success, Obama continues to labor under the image of a national Democratic Party many equate with big government and higher taxes, two things fiercely opposed by Nevadans -- especially the large number of independents who often decide state races.

Robert Kirkbride, one of those independents, said McCain might not represent "a big difference from what we have now," but at least that's better than what his opponent offers.

"Obama is talking about change, but his only change is higher taxes," said Kirkbride, 46, a software engineer with tattoos running down his ropy arms. "McCain may end up raising taxes too, but at least not right away."

Obama has said he would cut taxes for 95% of working families and increase them only for individuals making more than $200,000 and families making more than $250,000 a year. McCain opposes any tax hikes and would make permanent the tax cuts enacted under Bush.

Guns are another big issue -- more than 1 in 3 Nevada households contain at least one firearm -- and even though Obama promises to support the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, he didn't help his cause by telling a Pennsylvania crowd this month that he couldn't confiscate anybody's guns "even if I wanted to" because there were insufficient votes in Congress. The McCain campaign has made sure that quote and its qualifier get widely circulated.

Yucca Mountain, a perennial issue in federal races in Nevada, has gotten comparatively little notice. Obama opposes the nuclear waste dump, proposed for a site 90 miles from Las Vegas. McCain has voted in favor. But analysts say most voters are too preoccupied to care much.

Race, however, is a factor in the contest, which some discuss more frankly than others. Andy ("No last name, dear, I have my reasons") is a Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton but can't abide Obama.

"He'll do everything -- no offense to the Negroes -- for the Negroes and cut the whites down to nothing," the retired casino worker, 67, said between errands in downtown Reno. She doesn't like McCain any better and may stay home on election day.

But the biggest challenge facing Obama may be connecting with Nevada voters in a way the patrician John F. Kerry and diffident Al Gore never did.

"There's a gut feeling," said Herzik, the professor. "Do I feel this person understands the West, understands Nevada, understands me as a Nevadan?"

Asked about competing against a pair of Westerners, Obama responded with a quip. "I'm Western," he told the Reno Gazette-Journal in an interview this month. "I'm from Hawaii. You don't get any more Western than that."




By Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times, September 30, 2008

NEW YORK - For an audition to be second fiddle, Thursday's debate between often ill-informed newcomer Sarah Palin and often gaffe-prone veteran Joe Biden offers unusually large pitfalls - and promise.

For once, the whole world may be watching. Already, 3,100 media credentials have been issued, the most the Commission on Presidential Debates ever needed in seven vice presidential debates it's hosted.

The attention is driven by the public's fascination with Palin, the first-term Alaska governor that Republican presidential candidate John McCain plucked from relative political obscurity to be his running mate.

Initially, Palin was praised as a superb political communicator for the delivery of her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention four weeks ago. She energized the party's conservative base, which had reservations about McCain, and quickly showed she could outdraw McCain on the stump - a likely factor in their decision to appear together more often than running mates usually do.

But a series of shaky Palin television interviews have left even some conservatives questioning whether she is ready to be vice president. She couldn't describe the Bush doctrine in foreign affairs, seemed to have little grasp of the proposed financial industry bailout and even appeared to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's position on chasing al-Qaida terrorists in Pakistan.

Palin's performance against Biden, the Delaware Democrat with 35 years in the Senate, could restore her initial luster or seriously weaken the GOP ticket.

Last week's Obama-McCain debate appeared to give the Illinois Democrat a small boost in the polls but produced no knock-out blows. So the vice-presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis could be a pivotal moment in a race already filled with surprising twists.

Palin herself outlined the contest in an interview broadcast Tuesday night on the "CBS Evening News."

"He's got a tremendous amount of experience and, you know, I'm the new energy, the new face, the new ideas and he's got the experience based on many many years in the Senate and voters are gonna have a choice there of what it is that they want in these next four years," Palin said.

Palin left the campaign trail Monday to prepare at McCain's ranch in Sedona, Ariz. She is being coached by McCain's top campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, as well as advisers Tucker Eskew, Nicolle Wallace and Mark Wallace, all veterans of President Bush's political operation.

McCain strategists are well aware Palin's glowing image has been badly bruised since the convention.

She's been kept from nearly all contact with reporters except for a handful of high-profile TV interviews that revealed her relatively thin grasp of foreign policy and domestic issues. Palin's answers have become punch lines for comedians, and a mocking Palin impersonation by Tina Fey on "Saturday Night Live" has become a television and YouTube sensation.

So Palin is under heavy pressure to show a passing command of issues facing the next president.

"I don't think she can get away with comments on foreign policy like she knows about Russia because it's near Alaska." Minnesota-based Republican strategist Tom Homer said. Palin needs to "show ability to think on her feet and to engage with someone on the level of Sen. Biden without a TelePrompTer in front of her," Homer added.

In the CBS interview, Palin said she:

- Wouldn't "solely blame all of man's activities" for climate change, noting that world weather patterns are cyclical and have changed over time. "But it kind of doesn't matter at this point, as we debate what caused it," she said. "The point is: It's real. We need to do something about it."

- Supports safe and legal contraception, except the morning-after pill because of her belief that life begins at conception. "I am all for contraception. And I am all for preventative measures that are legal and safe, and should be taken but ..., again, I am one to believe that life starts at the moment of conception." Pressed on the point, Palin said: "Personally, I would not choose to participate in that kind of contraception."

Biden, for his part, was prepping at home in Wilmington, Del. On hand to help were top Obama campaign strategists David Axelrod, Anita Dunn and Ron Klain, who helped coach Vice President Al Gore in 2000.

A veteran debater after his Senate experience and his own two short-lived presidential campaigns, Biden has his own set of challenges.

His first presidential bid in 1987 ended after he appropriated the life story of British politician Neil Kinnock during a Democratic primary debate in Iowa. Even now, his off-the-cuff speaking style still produces verbal blunders, like when he mused aloud recently that Hillary Rodham Clinton might have made a better running mate for Obama.

And his reputation as a windy orator will be tested by the tight debate format, which allows 90-second answers and two-minute follow-ups.

In addition, Biden will be debating a female candidate who has excited many women and elicited sympathy for some attacks perceived as sexist. If Biden comes on too strong or is condescending, he could be viewed as bullying or disrespectful.

Biden spokesman David Wade expressed confidence.

"Joe Biden debated Sen. Clinton 12 times in the presidential race and those debates were substantive and hard hitting, and he debates strong women in the United States Senate," Wade said.

Biden has spoken to Clinton and California Sen. Barbara Boxer for advice on how best to debate a woman. And Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm was portraying Palin in his practice debates.

"Biden's advisers have to keep beating into his head that his normal style ... can be offensive," GOP strategist Ed Rollins said. "He has a tendency, like a lot of senators, to talk down to people. And that's a danger for him because there are an awful lot of women out there who relate to Palin."

And he might consider the example of Rick Lazio, Clinton's Republican opponent in the 2000 New York Senate contest.

The race was tight until the first televised debate, during which Lazio strode over to the former first lady insisting she sign a vow to eliminate large, unregulated contributions from the race. The gesture made Lazio seem menacing and generated sympathy for Clinton, particularly among women. She defeated Lazio by 10 points.

By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press, October 1, 2008

RENO, Nev. - Barack Obama on Tuesday stepped up his advocacy for the Bush Administration's endangered $700 billion bailout plan by making a round of calls to rank-and-file Democrats in the House and casting congressional inaction in dire, real-world terms. He also massaged his pitch, no longer using the word "bailout" to describe the bill.

In a speech laden with warnings about the impact on average voters, Obama made his strongest push yet for the financial package rejected Monday by the House, saying the upheaval was "no longer just a Wall Street crisis - it's an American crisis, and it's the American economy that needs this rescue plan."

"While there is plenty of blame to go around and many in Washington and on Wall Street who deserve it, all of us now have a responsibility to solve this crisis, because it affects the financial well-being of every single American," Obama said at a rally here. "There will be time to punish those who set this fire, but now is the moment for us to come together and put the fire out."

Obama reached out to individual House members Tuesday, signaling that the Democratic nominee was taking a deeper role in the process. The campaign would not disclose names, but said he was coordinating his efforts with the congressional leadership.

"He is urging members to take another look at it," spokeswoman Linda Douglass said.

For more than a week, Obama has directed his comments on the plan to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and congressional leaders, while John McCain involved himself directly in House talks.

But after the House defeated the bill with Democratic help, including a majority of the Congressional Black Caucus, the pressure began rising for Obama to make more direct appeals to his party.

Obama, who spoke Tuesday morning with President Bush, also proposed raising the federal insurance limit to $250,000 to aid small businesses - a suggestion that House Minority Leader John Boehner later said was "welcome news," given that Democrats initially rejected the idea.

In a speech here, which drew the loudest applause when Obama called the crisis an "outrage," Obama urged Democrats and Republicans to work together and "act now."

"We cannot risk another week or another month where American businesses are afraid to extend credit and lend money," Obama said. "That has an impact on housing here in Nevada. That has an impact on a small business owner who has got to make payroll, and if he can't make payroll on Friday, he may lay you off on Monday. If he lays you off on Monday, then that means you may not be able to make your payments to somebody that you just bought something from. It ripples throughout the economy."

Obama said the plan must treat taxpayers like investors, allowing them to recoup the bailout funds once the economy recovers.

By Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico, September 30, 2008

Trailing six points in Rasmussen's poll, having fallen four points since he suspended his campaign last week, the question for John McCain is: Haven't you learned anything?

His failure to do much of anything in Washington, after teasing the whole country and riveting its attention on him by suspending his campaign, has let the voters down - and they are turning away from McCain.

But there is still time for him to make his move. The House Republicans bought McCain another shot by turning down the $700 billion bailout package on Monday. With no House vote scheduled until Thursday, McCain still has time to do the right thing.

He should publicly announce his support for the House Republican alternative package of insurance, loans and tax changes to deal with the financial crisis. He should attack Barack Obama and the Democrats for supporting the use of tax money for a massive bailout when the same purpose can be accomplished by other, cheaper means. McCain should draw a line in the sand and take a firm position.

The Democrats are not prepared to pass their bailout proposal by themselves. If they were, they would have done so on Monday. Instead, they withheld the votes of their most vulnerable congressmen and let the package fail. If the Republican Party poses a united front in the House, with McCain's leadership, the Democrats will have to fall in line. They cannot not do anything. By taking a firm line, McCain can turn the whole process around to his - and his country's - advantage.

Who would have imagined that John McCain would lose the election because he had a failure of courage at the last minute? Who would have guessed that he would fail to stand on principle for fear of being criticized and would fail as a result? If John McCain is to lose this election, let it at least be fighting for principle, as he has done throughout his storied career.

By backing an alternative, McCain forces Obama to defend the Democratic/Bush package. He can tie Obama to Bush and to the Washington insider/Wall Street crowd. He can give his populism a programmatic reality and a topical relevance. Obama would have to spend the rest of the election defending the $700 billion turkey the length and breadth of the country.

America detests the bailout package. Polls show better than 2-to-1 opposition. Were McCain and the Republicans able to project that there is another alternative that works, the opposition would swell to even greater proportions.

Obama and the Democrats could cite the views of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Wall Street executives that the Republican relief package would be too little, too late. But voters can be pardoned for skepticism. Paulson, a few years removed from Wall Street, and Democrats, in hock to the street for campaign contributions, are naturally eager to get their hands on $700 billion. If Obama lends himself to that cause, it could cost him the election.

McCain needs to have the courage to free himself from the web of Washington deals and take a principled stand for the right side and stay there. Then the inevitable dynamics of the process will bring the country around to him. Otherwise, his campaign will have missed the opportunity to draw the kind of clear issue that would have gotten him elected president.

It is admirable to see a candidate of principle and conviction lose an election by standing on his beliefs. It is sickening to see one lose by abandoning them.




By Dick Morris, The Hill, September 30, 2008

The Democrats' candidate for VP doesn't deserve to be called a sage

Joseph Robinette Biden - known to all as "Joe" - was once the most talked about American politician in Britain. Unfortunately for the senior Delaware Senator, all the talk was accompanied by incredulous laughter. As part of his Presidential campaign 20 years ago, he lifted verbatim and without attribution Neil Kinnock's celebrated remarks: "Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to a University ... was it because all our predecessors were thick, those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up to play football?"

Biden told an audience at an Iowa fairground: "I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden's the first in his family ever to go to University ... is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright... who worked in the coal mines of Northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football?"

Note the overt claim to spontaneity at the outset of the plagiarism; but it wasn't just that which left his run for the Presidency buried under an avalanche of ridicule. It rapidly emerged that Biden was not the first member of his family to go to university, and that the closest any ancestral Bidens came to working underground was a grandfather who was a mining engineer - and during the campaign Biden also told a number of gratuitous untruths about his own academic record.

It would be very difficult for a politician in this country to be taken seriously ever again, after such a humiliation; but Americans are a more forgiving people, and so Biden was able to entertain them once again during the current race for the White House. Thus last year he declared that his then rival, Barack Obama, was "not yet ready for the Presidency", which was not a post suitable for "on-the-job training", but graciously acknowledged: " I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Other African-American politicians were hardly amused by the imputation that they were not "clean", and I don't suppose Obama himself was grateful. Still, the Illinois Senator was happy to choose Biden as his vice-presidential running-mate, for several reasons. He is not married to Bill Clinton; he has a strong following among white blue-collar voters, which Obama desperately needs; above all, he is said to have the experience which Obama lacks - he has been a Senator for 36 years and is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

For all the longevity of his tenure, Biden does not deserve the description lavished on him last month by the Los Angeles Times (among others) as "an acknowledged foreign policy sage". He voted against using American military force to remove Saddam Hussein's army from occupied Kuwait, but voted for the American invasion of sovereign Iraq in 2003. Later, he voted against the "surge" which has brought a degree of stability to that benighted country, proposing instead that it be allowed to break up along ethnic lines - the now discredited "Biden Plan". Experience is a wonderful thing, of course - but only if you learn the right lessons from it.

Doubtless, however, Joe Biden will stress the immense superiority of his acquired wisdom over Sarah Palin's much briefer curriculum vitae, when their one-off vice-presidential debate takes place on Thursday in St Louis, Missouri. Indeed, the Democrats and their camp-followers in the press have been chortling in anticipation of a massacre, especially after Mrs Palin's performance when interviewed last week by CBS's Katie Couric.

The Republican vice-presidential candidate had been unable to elaborate on the way in which John McCain had attempted to enforce greater regulation on the finance industry, beyond his demand for more supervision of the biggest mortgage lenders; and she struggled to justify her claim that being Governor of Alaska gave her a special insight into the threats from Russia.

Neither of her responses was articulate. But they weren't factually incorrect. She didn't make anything up. That's Biden territory. When he faced the deceptively easy-going Ms Couric, he told the CBS anchorwoman, a propos deals to rescue Wall Street: "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened'." As others, but not Ms Couric, have since observed, the US President at the time of the 1929 stock market crash was not Roosevelt, but Herbert Hoover; and Roosevelt didn't go on television, probably because no-one in America owned one at the time.

Such dedicated and inarticulate imprecision with the facts of history should not disqualify Joe Biden from being taken seriously as the next-in-line for the Presidency; he got away with his goof, as easy-going and genial men tend to do. But imagine what hysteria would have ensued if it was Mrs Palin who had constructed a fictitious account of the circumstances surrounding the great Wall Street Crash.

It is true - at least on actuarial grounds - that John McCain is more likely to die in a first term of office than a President Obama; and ahead of Thursday's debate between Biden and Palin, Democracy for America (the group started by former Democratic Presidential candidate Howard Dean) has run a television ad showing grotesquely enlarged photos of McCain's scarred face immediately following his most recent operation for melanoma, with the punch-line: "John McCain is 72 years old and had cancer four times. Why won't he release his medical records?"

As a tasteless way of terrifying the American public about the possibility of a President Palin, that certainly scores high on the sick-meter. But if Barack Obama does become US President, we should be very grateful that he is in such splendid physical condition. Nothing in Joe Biden's record, long as it is, suggests that he has the attributes one would wish for in a head of state. There would be plenty of laughs, though.

By Dominic Lawson, The Independent, September 30, 2008

John McCain and Barack Obama are both selling theories about what kind of leader America needs in the 21st century. But the financial crisis yanked their notions out of the lab and tested them in real time, under a magnifying glass. And now we have a much clearer idea of what we would risk with either man.

As often happens in moments of crisis, the candidates were themselves, only more so. McCain was the action hero, who promised to do the brave, hard things that no one else could. Fire the SEC Chairman! Suspend the campaign! Let's Make a Deal! He was a human diorama of the Great Man theory of history. Of course, getting credit for bringing all parties to the table to reach a historic agreement that pretty much everyone hates may make him wonder if action is overrated, especially after his campaign's self-congratulatory statements ended up being premature. Even with stakes higher than they've been for any vote in modern history, McCain still could not deliver his team for a bipartisan deal; even his own state's Representatives said no.

Obama, meanwhile, got to test his Unified Theory of Change We Can Believe In. His reserved, backstage approach risked looking cautious and calculating in its own way. But he has been arguing that the only way anything will change is if voters change the terms of the whole transaction and force government to listen to them and not just the lobbyists whispering in their ears. Just as this campaign has focused attention on electoral politics as never before, so did this crisis draw all eyes to Washington and how it works - and no one much liked what they saw. A government that could not lift a finger to fix health care or highways could suddenly find $700 billion for No Banker Left Behind? And so this time, people made themselves heard: they passed petitions, lit up the phone lines, melted the message boards. In an age of poisonous partisanship, it was like an antitoxin, the country drawn together, red and blue, young and old, in disgust at elected Representatives who had failed to foresee or forestall a man-made, slow-motion catastrophe.

As the talks derailed, Obama's more hands-off approach looked like a much smarter bet than McCain's all-in hand. But Obama may also now have some second thoughts about the virtues of national unity and citizen involvement. Sometimes it feels like democracy in action. Other times it feels like mob rule. The complexity of the problem and intricacy of the solution meant that the public response was more emotional than anything else. In a leadership vacuum, we got irrational belligerence, a desire to punish the greedheads that will take its broadest toll on the victims, not the perps. And for all the righteous rage, there was a refusal to admit that in many cases Wall Street's sins are also our own: the average American has nine credit cards with a $12,000 balance; we don't save; we overreach; and together we've created a situation where the prudent who lived within their means are expected to pay for the recklessness of both their neighbors and their leaders.

In one sense, it was a good time for both men to be auditioning for Leader of the Free World, since the ones already onstage were falling flat on their faces. It made for a sickening spectacle, watching the firefighters argue over the diameter of the hose as the house burned down around us. And President Bush, in a final countdown to oblivion and with sub-basement approval ratings, was hardly in a position to rally the public behind a plan that violated every economic and political principle he's ever espoused.

Fixing this crisis will involve compromises no one likes and discipline everyone needs. That's a pretty good template for the challenges ahead, like energy independence and entitlement reform. As a Senator, McCain has a long record of taking hard positions and ignoring party orthodoxy in the hunt for common ground. Obama, meanwhile, has claimed that he can expand the concept of citizenship to include more than casting a ballot every so often. But neither one dug in this time to explain why this bailout was necessary and why people needed to swallow hard and accept it, most notably when they were given the opportunity during last Friday's debate. It's natural that they didn't want to be too closely tied to a bill whose importance is matched only by its unpopularity. But it's not like the job they're auditioning for is getting any easier.

By NANCY GIBBS, Time, September 30, 2008

RENO, Nevada (Reuters) - White House contenders Barack Obama and John McCain sought to persuade skeptical Americans on Tuesday to back a $700 billion Wall Street bailout package and planned to be in Washington on Wednesday to vote on the measure.

A day after the U.S. House of Representatives sent global markets reeling by rejecting the financial rescue plan, Senate leaders said on Tuesday they scheduled a Wednesday evening vote on a new version of the measure, including a big increase in the amount of bank deposits

protected by the government's insurance program.

The campaigns of Democrat Obama and Republican McCain said the candidates would be on hand for the vote.

Obama and McCain had blamed each other for contributing to the collapse of the legislation on Monday, but a day later each stressed the need for both parties to work together to try to reach an agreement palatable to some of the 95 Democrats and 133 Republicans who combined to defeat the bailout.

Both encouraged Americans to back a Wall Street rescue because, as McCain said in Des Moines, Iowa, "Inaction is not an option." If the bailout passes the Senate, as expected, it would put more pressure on the House to follow suit when it meets again on Thursday.

Raising the limit on bank deposit insurance to $250,000 from $100,000 is an effort to shore up consumer and business confidence in banks and prevent a run on deposits. It may also win over politicians trying to sell the public on the hugely expensive plan, funded by taxpayers and seen as benefiting wealthy financiers who helped create the problem.

A new poll by the Pew Research Center found weakening public support for the bailout. The Saturday-Monday survey said Americans backed the plan by only a 45 percent to 38 percent margin.

'TIME FOR ACTION'

Obama told thousands at an outdoor rally in Reno: "It is not a time for politicians to concern themselves with the next election. It is a time for all of us to concern ourselves with the future of the country we love. This is a time for action."

McCain had said he believed one reason the House had not approved the package was because "it hasn't really sunk in that the people who are hurting and are being hurt are Main Street families, small businesses, those kinds of people that are the engine of our economy."

Obama, an Illinois senator, and McCain, an Arizona senator, are trying to use the crisis to project leadership. Both Obama and McCain said they backed lifting the limit on bank deposit insurance as a way to restore confidence.

Democrats accused McCain of interfering last week when he suspended his campaign and flew to Washington to participate in bailout negotiations that ended in disarray.

Opinion polls showed Americans trusted Obama more to handle the U.S. economy, helping him jump out to a slight advantage over McCain with Election Day five weeks away on November 4.

His lead over McCain narrowed in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll. He was up by 50 percent to 46 percent among likely voters, down from a 9-point edge nationally a week earlier.

McCain has suggested some short-term steps to stem the crisis, such as broadening the use of the Treasury's Exchange Stabilization Fund, which was used in the mid-1990s to help Mexico through a financial crisis. The Bush administration is already tapping it to help money market funds.

Marathon talks among Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Capitol Hill negotiators produced a deal over the weekend for a $700 billion bailout bill that included some provisions sought by lawmakers of both parties that would allow the government to recoup some of the cost of the rescue.

On Tuesday, amid the market turbulence and concerns about a deepening worldwide financial crisis, the presidential contenders stepped up their support for the package and pledged to do what they could to try to get it passed.

By Caren Bohan, Reuters, October 1, 2008

DES MOINES, Iowa - White House rivals John McCain and Barack Obama combined televised attack ads with statesmanlike appeals for bipartisanship on Tuesday as they vied for political gain in the shadow of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Both men spoke privately with President Bush about the collapse of the financial industry, then publicly made clear their differences with him, McCain more gently than his Democratic rival.

The Republican, campaigning in Iowa, pointedly told reporters there were steps the administration could still take "with the stroke of the pen to help alleviate the crisis gripping our economy. I urge them to do so."

McCain mentioned using a federal stabilization fund to back uninsured money market accounts. The Treasury Department is already using the fund to guarantee money market mutual funds, which were the only uninsured money market accounts. Treasury announced that program Sept. 19 after the failure of Lehman Bros. produced a surge of withdrawals from such funds.

The GOP candidate also suggested wielding authority to purchase $1 trillion in mortgages. A housing bill Bush signed July 30 included $300 billion in new loan authority for the government to back cheaper mortgages for troubled homeowners. The failed bailout bill would have added another $700 billion in authority to deal with troubled housing investments.

In addition, first Obama and then McCain said Congress should lift the current federal deposit insurance limit of $100,000 to $250,000.

Obama's campaign released a new commercial critical of the administration and his campaign rival at the same time. "The old trickle-down theory has failed us," the Illinois senator said in the ad. "We can't afford four more years like the last eight."

At day's end, both men, as well as Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, made plans to return to Washington to vote in the Senate on a resurrected bailout bill.

The intense maneuvering came one day after the House defeated a bipartisan bailout bill and the stock market responded with its largest one-day drop in history.

Those events, after 10 days of political and market uncertainty, underscored the importance of the economic debacle in a campaign with five weeks to run. Without a solution, the issue has the potential to become even more combustible in the next several days when millions of retirees and workers receive quarterly statements showing sharp drops in their personal investment accounts.

Obama has been gaining in numerous national and swing-state polls in recent days, while McCain has appeared to struggle since he announced a brief suspension in his campaign appearances to help solve the crisis.

He announced the pause a week ago, saying he would fly to Washington and stay there until a solution was found. Three days later, he reversed course and flew to Mississippi for a last Friday's long-scheduled campaign debate.

He sidestepped one interviewer during the day who asked whether he would suspend his campaign once again. "I'll do whatever is necessary and whatever my Republican colleagues and the administration and others ask me to do," McCain replied.

Aides said a return to Washington was likely in the next day or two, and McCain's travel plans were being made less than a day in advance as he awaited developments in the Capitol.

Obama campaigned in Nevada.

The day began with both presidential rivals emphasizing the need for bipartisanship and offering suggestions for easing the crisis.

"At this moment, when the jobs, retirement savings, and economic security of all Americans hang in the balance, it is imperative that all of us - Democrats and Republicans alike - come together to meet this crisis," Obama said in a written statement issued more than an hour before Bush appeared on television to urge lawmakers to work together.

He said Congress should raise the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation limit to $250,000 as part of the economic rescue package to "boost small businesses, make our banking system more secure, and help restore public confidence in our financial system."

He said he would contact leaders of Congress "to offer this idea and urge them to act without delay to pass a rescue plan."

McCain spoke at a campaign round-table a few hours later.

"I call on everyone in Washington to come together in a bipartisan way to address this crisis. I know that many of the solutions to this problem may be unpopular, but the dire consequences of inaction will be far more damaging to the economic security of American families and the fault will be all ours," he said.

At the same time, a less high-minded skirmish broke out.

McCain's commercial quoted the Washington Post as saying he had "pushed for stronger regulation" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two disgraced institutions that dominate the devastated mortgage industry, "while Mr. Obama was notably silent."

The commercial continues: "But, Democrats blocked the reforms. Loans soared. Then, the bubble burst. And, taxpayers are on the hook for billions."

The Republican National Committee unveiled an even tougher commercial that it said would air in the battleground states of Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

"Wall Street squanders our money and Washington is forced to bail them out with - you guessed it - our money.

"Can it get any worse? Under Barack Obama's plan, the government would spend a trillion dollars more, even after the bailout. A trillion dollars. Who pays? You do."

By DAVID ESPO, The Associated Press, October 1, 2008

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa - Besides stockholders whose portfolios were ravaged Monday afternoon, the one person with the most riding on the bailout bill that collapsed in Congress may have been Senator John McCain.

Mr. McCain had announced last week that he was suspending his presidential campaign to work to ensure the legislation's passage, even at the risk of skipping the first presidential debate unless a deal was locked down. (He later relented, debating without a deal.) He had called for the high-level White House meeting that some participants later called unhelpful. And after some initial hesitation, he had allowed himself to be identified with a bill that he thought necessary even if unpopular.

So when the deal fell apart on the House floor Monday, in no small measure because most of the chamber's Republicans balked at voting for it, the McCain campaign worked to contain the potential for damage. The first defense was to go on offense.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior McCain adviser, said "partisan attacks" by Senator Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress had caused some Republicans uncertain about the legislation to turn against it and so had "put at risk the homes, livelihoods and savings of millions of American families." The Obama campaign immediately dismissed that response as "angry and hyperpartisan."

Then, after Mr. Obama had urged Americans and the financial markets to "stay calm" in the wake of the rescue plan's collapse, while prodding Congress to "get this done," Mr. McCain hastily called a news conference here in which he, too, seemed to place some blame on Mr. Obama.

"Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process," Mr. McCain said, before adding in almost the same breath: "Now is not the time to fix the blame. It's time to fix the problem."

Both campaigns pledged to support efforts to resolve the situation, though they were short on details. Mr. McCain's campaign said he would continue to monitor developments closely to see whether more House Republicans could now be persuaded to vote for the bill, or whether it had to be amended to address their concerns. But his aides said there did not appear to be a need to return to Washington immediately, since Congress had recessed for Rosh Hashana.

Mr. Holtz-Eakin, the campaign's senior economic adviser, told reporters that "we don't have a specific proposal that we believe is the magic bullet."

"Having failed to have that bill passed through the House," he said, "I think it's time to regroup and see whether it's the content, whether it's the nature of the debate that went on on the floor of the House today, or whether people really just need to take one look around the financial markets and have a wake-up call and do the right thing."

Mr. Obama had said he was inclined to support the bill that failed Monday. But it remains an open question how much political capital he will seek to expend, or how invested he wants to become, in helping Democratic leaders win passage of a bill.

The failure of the measure took both camps by surprise. Mr. Obama, who was campaigning Monday in Colorado, had already sent reporters the advance text of a speech he planned to give lauding the agreement. And Mr. McCain, at a rally in Columbus, Ohio, seemed to be taking some credit for the bill.

Democrats had said all along that by inserting himself into negotiations, Mr. McCain had brought presidential politics to a delicate situation and could wind up hurting more than helping. After the House vote, his aides bristled at the suggestion that his involvement had in fact been a drawback, saying he had been instrumental in getting House Republicans a seat at the negotiating table and helping bring in more of their votes.

Mr. Holtz-Eakin said Mr. McCain had made "dozens of calls" on the bill, some to House Republicans who opposed it.

Aides to Mr. Obama said he had not directly reached out to try to sway any House Democrats who opposed the measure. But where Mr. McCain had accused Mr. Obama of taking a hands-off approach to the financial crisis, Democratic advisers said they believed that Mr. McCain now had a role in the legislation's failure.

As aides to both campaigns pointed fingers, Mr. Obama sought to stay above the fray and maintain a steady demeanor that advisers maintain has set him apart throughout the financial turmoil.

"One of the messages that I have to Congress is, Get this done," he said in Colorado after the House vote. "Democrats, Republicans, step up to the plate and get this done. Understand even as you get it done to stabilize the markets, we have more work to do to make sure that Main Street is getting the same kind of help that Wall Street is getting. We cannot forget who this is for. This is for the American people. This shouldn't be for a few insiders."

By Michael Cooper and Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times, September 29, 2008

A month after Gov. Sarah Palin joined Senator John McCain's ticket to a burst of excitement and anticipation among Republicans, she heads into a critical debate facing challenges from conservatives about her credentials, signs that her popularity is slipping and evidence that Republicans are worried about how much help she will be for Mr. McCain in November.

Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, flew to Mr. McCain's ranch in Sedona, Ariz., on Monday for three days of preparation with a team of his aides - a sharp contrast to the less structured preparation that led up to the senator's first debate.

The amount of time and staff power being devoted to this was evidence of concern among Mr. McCain's associates that Ms. Palin's early triumphs - a well-received convention speech, her drawing of big crowds - has been overtaken by a series of setbacks, creating higher stakes for her in the debate Thursday with the Democratic nominee for vice president, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware.

"I think she has pretty thoroughly - and probably irretrievably - proven that she is not up to the job of being president of the United States," David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush who is now a conservative columnist, said in an interview. "If she doesn't perform well, then people see it.

"And this is a moment of real high anxiety, a little bit like 9/11, when people look to Washington for comfort and leadership and want to know that people in charge know what they are doing."

Ms. Palin, of Alaska, continues to draw large crowds, is helping Mr. McCain with fund-raising and drawing volunteers, and is drumming up support among base Republican voters who were once skeptical of his candidacy, party leaders said in interviews. Yet these rough two weeks have led some Republicans to reconsider their initial assessment that she would sharply increase Mr. McCain's appeal among women and independent voters.

Her halting interview with Katie Couric on CBS News alarmed many Republicans and gave fodder for a devastating parody on Saturday Night Live.

"I think the Katie Couric interview shows that she needs to be briefed more on certain aspects," said Jim Greer, the Republican chairman in Florida. "She continues to be viewed very positively by the base of the party, but she needs to demonstrate that she's got the knowledge and ability to be president should the need arise."

Polling suggests that the number of Americans who think she is not fit to be president has increased since her introduction to the country last month. A number of conservative columnists and thinkers have publicly turned against her, or criticized Mr. McCain for choosing her, including George Will, David Brooks and Kathleen Parker, who wrote a column entitled "She's Out of Her League" for the National Review Online.

Mr. Frum noted the difficulty that Dan Quayle, who was elected vice president in 1988, had in recovering from an early set of mistakes that led him to be ridiculed as an intellectual lightweight. "The story of Dan Quayle is he did probably 1,000 smart things as vice president, but his image was locked in and it was very difficult to turn around," he said. "And Dan Quayle never in his life has performed as badly as Sarah Palin in the last month."

Several Republicans said that all of this could ultimately play to Ms. Palin's benefit, lowering expectations for her so much that a mediocre performance in the debate could be hailed as a success.

"Thanks to the mainstream media, quite a low expectation has been created for her performance," said Ron Carey, chairman of Minnesota's Republican Party. "The style of Sarah Palin is going to amaze people. She is going to be able to amaze people with the substance she is going to deliver."

And Mr. McCain's aides disputed the expressions of concern and said that if anything, the barrage of criticism and the performance in the few television interviews she has done gave her a low bar to clear in the debate. "I seriously hope that people continue to underestimate the most popular governor in America and a woman who speaks to the heart of America's economic angst," said Nicolle Wallace, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain.

And Mr. McCain, appearing with Ms. Palin in another interview with Ms. Couric on Monday night, offered a hearty endorsement. "I've seen underestimation before," he said. "I'm very proud of the excitement that Governor Palin has ignited with our party and around this country. It is a level of excitement and enthusiasm, frankly, that I haven't seen before."

Ms. Palin is getting ready for the debate at a time of enormous uncertainty about a highly complicated issue, the unfolding crisis on Wall Street, which makes preparing for the face off especially hard.

And the McCain campaign appears to be leaving nothing to chance. Ms. Palin will spend her preparation time at Mr. McCain's vacation compound in Sedona, with her husband and children. She is practicing for the debate with Steve Beigun, a former staff member of Mr. Bush's National Security Council; Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain's chief foreign policy aide; Mark Wallace, a deputy campaign manager for Mr. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign; and Ms. Wallace, who was a communications director in the Bush White House.

"This debate will probably determine her political persona for the rest of the campaign," said Saul Anuzis, the Republican chairman of Michigan. "I expect Palin to show the country she is capable, articulate and has the leadership skills necessary to serve."

Katon Dawson, the Republican chairman of South Carolina, said the debate was important to clear up what he described as misapprehensions about her created by "a pile-on by the media elite."

"You don't have this kind of negative, media attack without a question mark being put up," he said. "She's going to have a chance to erase that question mark."

But Mike Murphy, who used to work as a senior adviser to Mr. McCain, said Ms. Palin's performance in the campaign had underlined his argument that she was a bad choice for Mr. McCain. Mr. Murphy said he was skeptical that she could turn it around in one debate.

"She has the opportunity to undo some of the damage with a very strong debate performance," he said. "That's plausible. We'll just have to wait and see."

The rapid change in fortunes has led some Republicans to question the decision by Mr. McCain's advisers to restrict her exposure to unscripted settings - town-hall-style meetings, news conferences or interviews - saying such events would have helped her prepare her for such high-profile interviews as the one with Ms. Couric, and the debate.

"I disagree with the campaign's approach," said Rick Wilson, a Republican consultant. "I think they ought to toss her into the deep end from the outset; let her get it over quickly. Everything else after that is, you've seen the elephant."

Ms. Palin has traveled with a briefing team since Sept. 10. Two people close to the campaign, addressing her difficulties, said she had been stuffed with facts as if preparing for an oral exam and had become nervous and unnatural in the few interviews.

Advisers said she was a diligent worker and was frequently up until the small hours of the morning in her hotel room trying to cram as much information as possible before the debate.

"I think she has to be careful not to be overprogrammed for the debate," said Robert T. Bennett, the Ohio Republican chairman. "I think she's a lot brighter than people are giving her credit for."

By Adam Nagourney, The New York Times, September 29, 2008

John McCain's impetuosity is either thrilling or disturbing. Barack Obama's cool is either sober or detached. It's clear now how each would govern.

October came early this year. In presidential politics, the penultimate month almost always brings surprises, or at least big news. In 1980, the Carter-Reagan debate that put the Gipper in the White House was not held until seven days before the Nov. 4 election. In 1992, Iran-contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh chose the last weekend of the race to indict Reagan-era Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, wounding George H.W. Bush, who was seeking re-election. In 2000, a Fox station in Maine broke the story of an old DUI of George W. Bush's, news that Bush's advisers believe hurt him in the popular vote against Al Gore. Four years ago, in 2004, a videotape of a very-much-alive Osama bin Laden stymied John Kerry's bid by sending worried voters back to the seemingly tougher Republican ticket (despite the fact that the very same Republican ticket had been unsuccessfully searching for the very same bin Laden for more than three years).

With the troubled markets and the ensuing debate over the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of the financial sector, October started in September. By suspending his campaign and threatening to postpone the foreign-policy debate in Oxford, Miss. - after a campaign in which he's taken hawkish stands on Russia, Iraq and just about everything - John McCain quickly emerged as Mr. Hot, a candidate who makes no apologies for his often merry mischief-making. (See Palin, Sarah H., selection of for further evidence.) With his measured responses to the news of the season and his steady insistence on projecting a cerebral image, Barack Obama came off as Mr. Cool, at once impressively intellectual and yet aloof.

The three tests of recent weeks - the vice presidential nominations, the conflict in Georgia and now the financial crisis - have raised, in a serious way not always evident in presidential politics, the key question: how would each man lead? Our view is that if you are among the 18 percent or so of undecided voters (the current figure in most national polls), we think you now have more than enough on which to decide. McCain and Obama see the world differently, and you can see how; they behave in their own skins differently, and you can see how. The drama of the autumn has served perhaps the noblest end we could hope for, shedding light on how each man would govern. McCain is passionate, sometimes impulsive and unpredictable; Obama is precise, occasionally withdrawn and methodical.

It would be comforting, of course, if there were such a man as Mr. Just Right, but human nature is rarely so accommodating. Politicians, like the rest of us (only more so), tend to overcompensate. Obama cannot afford to be seen by voters as an Angry Black Man, but he sometimes appears calm to the point of passivity. At moments during the past two weeks of dizzying market gyrations and grim economic tidings, he seemed more like a bystander than a player. This may, in fact, have been the wise choice, both for the country and for his political fortunes. He understood that, by butting into the delicate negotiations between the White House, Treasury and Congress to shape a rescue package, a presidential candidate risked injecting politics and partisanship into a situation that demanded statesmanship and discretion.

On the other hand, McCain may have figured he had nothing to lose by plunging in. As his running mate, Sarah Palin, mangled her canned answers to Katie Couric and showed up on YouTube submitting to anti-witchcraft ministrations from a Pentecostal pastor, McCain was rapidly losing his postconvention bounce. McCain is an improviser and, on occasion, a hip-shooter. A former Navy pilot, he has not always demonstrated the soundest judgment. (Of course, Obama enjoys a natural advantage from not having been in public life as long as McCain: you can't be criticized for making decisions when you haven't been in the arena to make them.) In his most recent book, "Hard Choices," McCain describes how, on his last bombing mission over Hanoi, he heard the warning tone of an enemy SAM missile locking on to his plane. Bravely, or rashly, McCain did not take evasive maneuvers but rather kept on flying straight in an attempt to deliver his bombs on target. The missile blew off his right wing, and he spent the next five years in captivity. Over the subsequent years, mostly spent in politics, McCain has learned to "jink and juke," in pilots' parlance, but he sometimes still demonstrates a willfulness that can be admirable, or just foolhardy.

Watching McCain swoop and veer over the past two weeks has been enough to induce vertigo, even among his admirers. He began by saying that the "fundamentals" of the economy were "strong" and then, ridiculed by Obama, declared that the economy was "in total crisis." He took an angry populist tone against Wall Street and the regulators and proposed a 9/11-style commission to investigate what had gone wrong. He said if he were president, he would fire SEC Chairman Chris Cox. Informed that the president cannot fire the head of the SEC, McCain pronounced Cox to be a "good man," while still calling for his resignation.

Obama, meanwhile, kept his statements about the crisis measured, citing principles that should be taken into account in any bailout package but not offering a grand explanation for why one was needed. Throughout, he was quietly talking to Hank Paulson on a daily basis and grew to like Bush's Treasury secretary so much that he told CNBC he was thinking of keeping him on for at least a transition period.

A lifelong admirer of Theodore Roosevelt, McCain likes to be "in the arena," which may be why he asked the White House to summon a meeting of all the principals last Thursday - Republican and Democratic Hill leaders, top administration officials and the two presidential candidates.

McCain took no position at the meeting, while Obama, at least according to some published accounts, peppered Paulson with questions. McCain was apparently positioning himself to play, once more, the Man on a White Horse - riding to the rescue by forging a compromise that the House Republicans could live with. But he seemed to be winging it. Democrats denounced him for staging an elaborate photo op that served only to upset fragile negotiations. Notably, no Republican Hill leaders spoke out in defense of McCain. "They don't like him very much," acknowledged one McCain adviser.

The temperaments of the two candidates both have virtues, both vices. History can belong to the bold—to the Churchills and the Reagans, to men who stand when others sit or surrender, to men who seem to move through the world to a soundtrack of trumpets. But history also belongs to the careful, and to the prudent. Churchill needed FDR's caution and his competing intellectual understanding of the war and of the world that was coming into being; Reagan required George H.W. Bush's grasp of diplomacy and sense of balance to complete the end of the cold war and create a new (and, for Bush 41 and for Clinton, successful) model for American military action in a post-Soviet world.

McCain is not the first Republican to seem too hot. Richard Nixon's temper haunted him, and Bob Dole's reputation as a "hatchet man" doomed any chance he had of beating Bill Clinton in 1996 (Clinton had his own purple rages, but compensated with gushes of warmth). "Barry Goldwater was not particularly angry," notes Princeton historian Julian Zelizer, "but Lyndon Johnson made him seem that way - someone who was too hot and could not be trusted with the bomb."

Democrats, on the other hand, have suffered in recent years by seeming too cold. Two-time loser Adlai Stevenson (1952 and 1956) was brainy but so aloof he could not relate to voters. Michael Dukakis came across as a chilly technocrat who wouldn't protect his own family from criminals, and Al Gore never overcame the impression that he was insincere and a little geeky. John Kerry came across as an effete aristocrat who pretended to like NASCAR racing.

Obama has a tendency to sound like a windy professor. In the Friday-night debate, he was cool but to the point and unruffled when McCain condescended to him as naive and callow. McCain was more emotional and personal, but his jokes fell flat. The candidates were encouraged to address each other directly, but only Obama did, and the effect was to make McCain look like the standoffish one. (McCain's advisers say they had warned him against looking at his opponent, fearing Obama might rile him.) Obama made no attempt to joke, other than to mock McCain for singing songs about bombing Iran. But he seemed perfectly comfortable standing up to his opponent.

Still, leadership is measured in even more primal ways. The burden of the Democratic Party, one that it has to shed in the next 40 days or risk losing yet another race, is elemental. "We forget that voters want a daddy and not a mama, and no matter how big the 'caring' issues are - education, health care - at the end of the day they want a president who is going to defend the country and not take too much of their money away from them," says Harold Ford Jr., the former Tennessee congressman and head of the Democratic Leadership Council. Whoever can strike that chord best is likely to win in November, regardless of whether his spirit runs hot or cold.

Both presidential candidates said they were likely to support a Wall Street bailout agreement hashed out in late-night negotiations yesterday by the Bush administration and congressional leaders.

Sen. John McCain, appearing on ABC News's "This Week," said, "This is something all of us will swallow hard and go forward with. The option of doing nothing is simply not an acceptable option."

Sen. Barack Obama, in a statement put out by his campaign, said, "while I look forward to reviewing the language of the legislation, it appears that the tentative deal embraces these principles," referring to his stance that any agreement would have to include an oversight board, limits to pay for executives whose companies benefit from the bailout and measures to help Americans pay their mortgages and and make sure taxpayers collect any profits that come from the bailout.

As for the aid that will be offered to Wall Street firms, Obama said: "It is not a cause for celebration. But this step is necessary."




By Perry Bacon Jr., The Washington Post, September 28, 2008

DETROIT, Mich -- Barack Obama sounded a bit wistful about his long campaign for the presidency at a fundraiser today, telling a crowd of supporters, "You couldn't have written a novel with all the crazy stuff that has happened in this election."

"One of the wonderful things about having such an extraordinary election process is that I've seen all the cycles of ups and downs, twists and turns," he told the roughly 100 donors gathered inside the Detroit Public Library before a rally here.

"It seemed like an eternity, three or four weeks ago, when people were calling me and fussing, 'We're talking about lipstick and pigs, what's happening?' I said my suspicion is that it's going to turn once again," Obama said. "No matter how many times you reshuffle the deck, what you keep on coming up with is the fact that this is a serious time. It requires serious leadership."

The comment seemed an acknowledgment of what the Obama campaign itself does not say: the financial meltdown on Wall Street has likely helped the Democratic nominee.

Many of the donors were Jewish, and Obama ended his brief remarks by wishing the audience a happy Rosh Hashanah, saying one of the things he likes about the Jewish New Year holiday is the opportunity to take stock and ask, "Are we right with each other? And are we right with God?"

Once on stage at a rally of more than 15,000 people here, the Democratic nominee turned back to his theme of the last two weeks: the economic crisis on Wall Street. He continued to blast McCain for his support of deregulation and at the same time claimed credit for several parts of the agreement Congress reached late Saturday, noting he had touted similar ideas.

And he mocked McCain for repeatedly saying that Obama did not "understand" various situations during Friday's debate.

"No, I understand: You want more of the same," Obama said, appearing to address McCain. "A fifth grader could understand it's more of the same."

By Perry Bacon Jr., The Washington Post, September 28, 2008

AKRON, Ohio -- The men gathered for breakfast around the long table at a Bob Evans restaurant here consider Sen. John McCain a brother. Most have never met him and never will, but he is a veteran, just like them, and that is enough.

"He is one of us, a military man, and he has never forgotten who we are," said retired Maj. Gen. Edward Mechenbier. "He is a person that I could look at with great admiration and pride and say, 'He is my commander in chief.' "

McCain has never attracted huge crowds and mass followings the way his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, and his own running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, have. But throughout his campaign, the former prisoner of war has enjoyed the fervent backing of a fraternity of veterans and their families, who rallied to his cause even when he looked like a sure loser in the Republican primaries and now provide a key core of support in the final days of his quest for the presidency.

More than 240 retired generals and admirals have endorsed McCain, and veterans -- mostly older ones who fought in Korea and Vietnam -- form the backbone of his campaign's "victory centers." They travel the country to tell the story of McCain's imprisonment in Vietnam, they man phone lines, and they push fellow veterans to give McCain money and support.

Early this month, three of the campaign's most notable military supporters -- Mechenbier and Col. Thomas Moe, who were POWs in Vietnam, and Capt. Leslie Smith -- traveled through Ohio on a three-day bus tour to rally support for McCain. At one stop after another, at veterans nursing homes and memorial parks, at small gatherings and in restaurants, they shared their war stories and received a hero's welcome.

Veterans along the way said they support McCain partly because of their shared experience and partly out of concern for the nation's security. Although polls show that terrorism and the war in Iraq have faded as issues for most voters, they remain prominent in the minds of veterans, many of whom said they do not trust Obama to run the military.

"All of us have been fighting, shot and wounded, and we know how dangerous the world is," said George Manos, 75, a Korean War veteran who wore his VFW post's dress uniform to the breakfast at Bob Evans. Obama, he said, "does not seem to realize how dangerous the world is."

As a group, veterans lean Republican, and a Washington Post-ABC News poll in late August showed McCain leading Obama by 54 percent to 37 percent among them. Many of the nation's 19 million veterans live in some of the biggest battleground states of the election, including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, giving McCain a built-in boost. And, unlike other groups, such as younger voters, veterans traditionally turn out in large numbers.

Veterans can also be powerful campaigners, engendering a level of respect and interest that other types of supporters cannot, particularly when the country is fighting two wars.

Marcia Burke, 59, who drove an hour with a brace on one leg to hear the veterans speak at a stop near Cleveland, said she was "honored to be in their presence because of what they have done for our country and what Senator McCain has done."

She and others in the Ohio crowds reflected the Republican base -- traditional conservatives, many older, mostly white. Some were veterans; others were from military families. Many waved flags, and many others wore them -- embroidered on jean jackets and ties or reflected in earrings with red, white and blue jewels.

Their bond is marked by their definition of patriotism. At the breakfast stop in Akron, Mechenbier, who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967, asked an intimate gathering of 15 military reservists and representatives of local VFW posts to set aside the issues in the campaign and consider one question as they decided between McCain and Obama.

"When it comes down to people like us, the question is: Which one would I be more proud to have go around representing my country?" said Mechenbier, who was a POW for six years. "And on a more personal basis, which one would I be more comfortable saluting as my commander in chief?"

Mechenbier lives in Beavercreek, Ohio, and retired from the Air Force in 2004 after four decades of service. McCain is the first candidate he has campaigned for, and he serves as chairman of a Veterans for McCain chapter near his home. After breakfast, Mechenbier pulled an Air Force coin out of his pocket and read aloud the core values of the service inscribed on it -- integrity first, service before self and excellence in all we do. "This is what John McCain represents," he said.

Obama, who did not serve in the military, has attracted some support among veterans groups, particularly younger veterans who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan and want to see U.S. troops return from Iraq soon. According to a report by the Center for Responsive Politics, Obama has received more money from troops deployed overseas than McCain has through June. At that time, Obama's donations from deployed troops totaled $60,642, compared with $10,665 for McCain.

There are also groups of veterans, some backed by liberal advocacy organizations, that have produced Web sites and online ads opposing McCain and questioning whether he has the temperament for the presidency.

The older veterans drawn to the bus tour voiced few doubts about McCain's temperament or what he would do with the military, but a couple expressed concerns about his support for veterans issues.

Unlike Obama, McCain did not back legislation this year that would pay tuition and other expenses at four-year public universities for veterans who have served at least three years since the 2001 terrorist attacks. McCain said at the time that he did not support the bill, which passed 75 to 22, because it would be a disincentive for service members to become noncommissioned officers, whom he called "the backbone of all the services." McCain co-sponsored a bill that would have required troops to serve more time to get full benefits.

When a question about McCain's votes on such bills came up at the breakfast, Col. Moe said, "Now, ask yourself, does it make sense that John McCain, who has served and sacrificed so much for this country, would not support veterans? Is it logical to you for a man who has served his country as a war hero? Most of these bills had a lot of pork in them."

Moe is respected among Ohio veterans and was given a raucous ovation at the Republican National Convention when Palin highlighted him in her speech. As he boarded the bus, en route to a memorial park in Canton, a police officer and Army veteran pulled him aside for an autograph.

"We've got to win," the officer told Moe, who had lived within a few feet of McCain for a time in Hanoi.

At each stop, Moe told of watching McCain through a pinhole drilled through his cell door after he returned from brutal torture sessions.

"Even today he cannot lift his arm to salute the flag he serves," Moe said. "Sometimes I would see him coming back from a particularly bad torture session walking with his arms on his knees to hold himself up. John, in all the pain he was in, would stand up and give me a big smile and thumbs-up. . . . John McCain has got the grit to see us to victory, and he's never going to run up that white flag, because that's death."

The crowd in Canton stood and applauded, just as they did in Sandusky, a town of about 25,000 near Lake Erie.

"How a person deals with challenges is important. If you're on the fence, listening to these veterans might help you make a decision," said Karen McTague, 54, treasurer of the Ottawa County Republicans.

It is what she doesn't know about Obama that worries her. The Democratic nominee has spoken frequently about his Christian faith, his commitment to national security and his love of country, but McTague said she still harbors fears about his background because Obama's father, whom the candidate hardly knew, was raised as a Muslim.

"If it looks like he appeals to Muslims, those countries may think they have opportunity," she said.

One of the last stops on the bus tour was Strongsville, a 45,000-people town outside Cleveland where U.S. flags lined the main street and were draped over a white gazebo that stood in the center of town.

Mayor Thomas Perciak had "God Bless America" piped in over the sound system to greet Moe, Smith and Mechenbier and rounded up as many people as he could to hear their speeches.

"I've walked around from group to group, and I've said, 'We have an American hero who wants to be president, let's support him,' " Perciak said, before posing for a picture with the other veterans who had come to campaign for their brother.

By Krissah Williams Thompson, The Washington Post, September 29, 2008

Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama expressed cautious support for a $700 billion bailout of the nation's biggest financial institutions, though both reserved the right to change their minds after they have reviewed details of the hastily arranged deal.

The candidates made their comments as both prepared to return to the campaign trail after an odd week in which electioneering was interrupted by the economic crisis, McCain's brief pledge to suspend his campaign and the first debate between the two candidates.

Both camps now turn their attention to Thursday's debate between the vice presidential candidates, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Se. Joseph Biden Jr. The debate is sure to prompt particular interest in the performance of Palin, whose limited exposure to tough questions has been criticized by opponents and supporters alike.

McCain's campaign announced that Palin will step off the trail entirely tomorrow and Wednesday as she prepares for her most significant unscripted event of the campaign.

On the economic bailout, McCain said on ABC's "This Week" that he will "swallow hard and go forward" with the plan, adding that it is time to "get this deal off the table, let's get this to the president."

McCain, who returned to Washington last week to help Congress reach a deal, said yesterday that "the option of doing nothing is simply not an acceptable option."

Obama called the need for a bailout "the culmination of a sorry period in our history, in which reckless speculation and greed on Wall Street and lax oversight from Washington led to a meltdown of our financial markets."

Obama said that as president he would order a review of the bailout plan to ensure it meets the principles he sought, including strict oversight and limits on executive pay. But he said a failure to approve the proposal would have "devastating consequences" for the U.S. economy.

"When taxpayers are asked to take such an extraordinary step because of the irresponsibility of a relative few, it is not a cause for celebration," Obama said. "But this step is necessary."

The campaigns continued to squabble over the extraordinary scene of last week's White House meeting on the economy and the sometimes angry negotiations over the bailout package, which culminated in a deal early yesterday.

McCain explained on ABC that he "came back because I didn't want to phone it in. I won't claim a bit of credit if that makes them feel better."

But Democrats noted that McCain spent very little time on Capitol Hill talking directly with lawmakers, instead preferring to work the phones from his Crystal City headquarters.

And an Obama spokesman sent out e-mails to reporters noting that, while lawmakers and congressional staff members worked into Saturday night to hammer out the deal, McCain was at CityZen, one of Washington's priciest restaurants.

"After taking 22 hours to get from New York to Washington to pull a pointless political stunt, McCain spent yesterday working the phones -- from his campaign headquarters across the river from the Capitol," said Damien LaVera, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.

Campaigning in Detroit, Obama continued to attack McCain, saying the Republican's backing of deregulation laws helped cause the economic crisis.

"You can't make up for 26 years in 26 days," Obama told a crowd of more than 15,000 at a rally in downtown Detroit. "For most of the 26 years, he's been against the common-sense rules and regulations that could have stopped this problem."

And he mocked McCain's initial response to the crisis. "His first response to the greatest financial meltdown in generations was a Katrina-like response," Obama said. "He sort of stood there, said, 'The fundamentals of the economy are strong.' "

Throughout Friday's debate, McCain suggested that Obama didn't "understand" a number of issues, a charge Obama tossed back at his opponent yesterday.

"No, I understand -- you want more of the same," he said, referring to McCain's embrace of some policies advocated by the Bush administration. "A fifth-grader could understand it's more of the same."

A McCain spokesman responded that Obama had "ignored his record of opposing middle-class tax relief" during the rally.

"Barack Obama voted 94 times in just three years for higher taxes," said spokesman Tucker Bounds.

Palin also sparked some controversy over the weekend by saying in response to a question at a campaign stop that U.S. troops in Afghanistan should cross the border into Pakistan to fight terrorism. "If that's what we have to do to stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should," she answered.

Democrats quickly noted that McCain has criticized Obama for a similar answer, including at Friday's debate. In the appearance on ABC, McCain played down the comment, saying: "She would not . . . she understands and has stated repeatedly that we're not going to do anything except in America's national security interest."

Referring to Palin's critics, he added: "They can complain all they want to. The American people have responded to her in a way that's been wonderful. I'm so happy that she is part of the team."

By Michael D. Shear and Perry Bacon Jr., The Washington Post, September 29, 2008

GRAND LEDGE, Mich. -- It was a gorgeous fall Saturday in a battleground state. The sun was out, the crowd was fired up and Hillary Clinton was rolling. "The next president is going to inherit a lot of problems," she told a thousand or so cheering supporters on a hill overlooking the Grand River. "We saw that over the last couple of years, but it's even more acute right now. Therefore, we need a president with good, new ideas; with an ability to think outside the box, who can bring in people from all walks of life to advise and suggest about what needs to be done."

The main points of the script, though, probably weren't quite the ones she thought she'd be delivering in Michigan this weekend, if you'd asked her a year ago, before the primaries heated up and before Barack Obama beat her to the Democratic nomination. "There's no doubt in anyone's mind that Sen. Obama understands the economic challenges we face, as well as the need to change the way we do business at home and here in the world," Clinton said. "I shared a debate stage with Barack about, oh, 22 times -- but who's counting? And I'm now campaigning as hard as I can to make sure he's our next president -- and I think last night [at the first presidential debate] a lot of Americans saw why."

Clinton is, at this point -- with 38 days left before the election -- just another loyal soldier in the Obama army; her aides are quick to tell reporters she'll go wherever she's told, whenever she's told, by Obama's strategists in Chicago. Since Democrats escaped the media-generated Clinton vs. Obama drama at the convention in Denver, Clinton has already hit Ohio and Florida on behalf of her one-time foe. Now go to Michigan? You got it, Barack. On the same day, Clinton's political action committee also sent some of her supporters to New Hampshire to canvass on Obama's behalf as part of a new program called "Hillary Sent Me!" Yes, on some level, her Saturday running around the Wolverine State must have brought up some wistfulness. (Her staff declined to make her available to Salon for an interview.) Clinton was the only Democrat who left her name on the ballot for the state's outlaw primary back in January, and she won 55 percent of the vote (the rest went to "uncommitted"). Eventually, the decision in June to strip some of Michigan's convention delegates and award some to Obama (giving him all the votes that went to "uncommitted") was the final death knell for her presidential campaign. She never came to the state during the primary battle, obeying an edict from the national party that all candidates stay away, and she finally thanked Michiganders for their support on Saturday.

"I am very grateful for the support that many people in Michigan gave me," Clinton said. "You have been stalwart supporters, and I will never, ever forget it, because I care deeply about what happens to our manufacturing sector and what happens to small towns and cities." The crowd cheered her on, but this was an Obama rally, make no mistake. When someone tried to start up a "Hill-a-ry! Hill-a-ry!" chant, it died out quickly, and organizers ran out of Obama-Biden signs so fast that after the event, supporters were trying to buy them from the people who got one.

It's no mystery why the Obama camp wanted Clinton here. The small towns and cities of Michigan are some of the places that are hurting the most after eight years of the Bush economy; the state has long had the sad distinction of occupying the bleeding edge of any U.S. downturns (but it wasn't doing as badly when Clinton's husband was the president). Clinton swung through Grand Ledge, just outside Lansing, then flew to Grand Rapids, something of a Republican stronghold to the west, before wrapping up with an evening rally in Flint, Michael Moore's hometown. (Unfortunately, her schedule wound up in flux all day, as a Senate vote back in Washington delayed her arrival in the state. She got to Grand Ledge hours after most voters showed up expecting to see her, but then she hopped into a plane to fly to and from Grand Rapids and wound up nearly an hour early to the Flint stop.)

She was addressing the people Obama once called "bitter," on a mission to convince them they need him now as much as he needs them to beat John McCain. Polls show Obama has opened up a bigger lead here in the past couple of weeks, but he's got to hold on to voters concerned about the economy to win in November. "People in Michigan are beginning to really cast their votes for Barack," Clinton said. "The numbers keep going up, but I don't take anything for granted, and I don't think any of us should, because this will be a close election."

Quite a few of Clinton's former supporters came out to hear her Saturday, and they were glad to have the chance. "I believe she understands exactly what the middle class in America needs, especially the state of Michigan -- change," said Marty Taylor, 51, from Lansing. She was wearing two buttons -- one that compared Obama to John F. Kennedy, and one that celebrated Clinton's campaign. "Somebody that cares about us, somebody that understands that the middle class is what built our country, and we are going down the drain." Taylor retired after 31 years as an autoworker, and now works at the Curves fitness center in Grand Ledge (where they closed just in time for her to make it to the Clinton rally -- not because of the event, though "we did mention it to a few of the ladies that were in this morning"). Thanks to a United Auto Workers contract, General Motors still pays her health benefits, but Taylor doesn't expect that to last too long. "Our auto industry was our bread and butter, basically, and the bread is gone and the butter is shortly going behind it," she said.

With the economy as bad as it is, Taylor didn't have much trouble getting on board with Obama. "We were all crushed when she didn't get it, but I'm hoping everyone's switched their allegiance from her," she said. "I believe in him, too. I think that he is a real person's person."

Standing nearby, another Clinton supporter, Genny Buffone, chimed in. "He's fresh, he's young," said Buffone, 55, a hospital technician from Holt, Mich. "I'm tired of old, white men in the White House," Taylor said, laughing. Neither one of them was too impressed by McCain's new pal Sarah Palin, who was supposed to help Republicans pick up working-class women. "That was a joke," Buffone said.

Most of Clinton's remarks Saturday would have worked just as well if she were the candidate as they did on Obama's behalf -- they both had the same basic economic message during the primaries, and from now until Nov. 4, there's not much else any Democrat will be talking to voters about besides the economy. "The disparity between the rich and the middle class was not like it is today" when Clinton grew up in Illinois, she said (and people yelled back, "Right!"). "It is a giant gulf and it's eating away at our society." McCain, she told voters, would just keep things the way they are now. Obama would bring change.

There were a few lines more focused on, well, Clinton, than on anything else. "I started warning about home foreclosures two years ago," she said. Later, she reminisced a little. "This has been an extraordinary experience for me -- being able to crisscross our country, running for president, never thinking I would do such a thing in my life -- running against some great public servants, having it come down to Barack and me, where either way we were going to break all kinds of barriers and win on behalf of the American people." If not for the fact that her motorcade was much smaller, and for the Obama sign on the podium, Clinton might have seemed like the candidate at times. But she never hesitated in urging people to vote for Obama, who -- along with Michelle Obama and Joe and Jill Biden -- will be in Detroit Sunday. (Clinton didn't stick around to see their rally.)

Obama himself might be hard-pressed to come up with a get-out-the-vote tactic that motivates people like the story Clinton told Saturday afternoon about what could happen the day after Election Day. "Let's assume that, you know, the election and the counting goes late, and you just can't stay up any longer, so you go to bed, and you wake up, and you're afraid to find out what happened," she said. "So you kind of slow walk it -- you know, you brush your teeth for 10 minutes, like the dentist always tells you anyway, you make your coffee extra strong, and then finally, you know, you gotta figure out what happened. Think how you will feel if it's four more years [of a Republican administration]."

Shouts of "No!" rose up from the crowd, which was hanging on every word. "I don't think that's a really good outcome for Michigan," she said. "Contrast that to how excited you'll be if change has finally come! Yes, we can, and yes, we will!"

By the end of the speech, the primary fight seemed as if it was years ago. Watching Clinton Saturday, you would have thought she was an Obama supporter from Day One.

By Mike Madden, Salon News, September 28, 2008

Some Believe That No Matter Who Wins Election, Little in Their Lives Will Change

CANTON, Miss. -- The presidential campaign is as close as it will ever be to Robert Lawson's wood-frame house, but he's not the least bit impressed. Resting in the shade of his screened porch in front of an old car junkyard, he said the candidates who were 150 miles away in Oxford for the first presidential debate Friday night may as well have been 150,000 miles from his world of broken-down cars and shuttered small business.

"They are not concerned about Canton," said Lawson, 53, sipping ice water and taking drags on a cigarette. "Most people are fed up with promises that are never kept. They promise this, they promise that. . . . I listen at them bickering at one another, and I get fed up and say to myself, 'Ain't either one of you going to get up there and do anything you saying.' "

Despite an intense interest in this year's presidential election that has led to a surge in new registrants, there remain pockets of Americans who are deeply skeptical of the candidates and uninterested in participating. Their detachment is bred of years of disappointment and the pervasive feeling that no matter who wins, little in their lives will change.

That disconnection is particularly stark in a place such as Canton, which, on the face of it, should be enthusiastically behind the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama.

Though Canton is 80 percent black and was once a battleground of the civil rights movement, there is considerable ambivalence here about the chance to elect the nation's first African American president. There's a hardened sense among many in this town of 13,000 that Obama does not know about and could not understand their daily problems. Others know a black man is running but can't quite remember his name. Some are excited by Obama's candidacy but have never voted, cannot recall the last time they went to the polls, or have no idea how or where to register.

Even those who vote consistently get where their neighbors are coming from. "They feel like the message down here isn't being delivered to the top," said Robert C.O. Chinn Jr., a lifelong Canton resident, chair of the Madison County Democratic Party and the only person in town to put up an Obama campaign sign. "They feel like the people at the top are game players. They aren't taking care of the needs."

Early on, the Obama campaign held up Mississippi as an example of a state where a huge black turnout -- 37 percent of the population is African American -- could drive an unexpected victory. But those hopes faded quickly, and the deep-rooted doubt that some here have suggests the challenge for Obama in other states, such as Virginia and North Carolina, where the Democrat is counting on a swell of African American support to put him over the top.

In Canton, the lack of connection stems from the hard realities of life that have remained unchanged whether a Democrat or a Republican was in the White House -- median incomes of $24,000, according to the most recent census figures, a low-achieving school system and few job opportunities.

Canton markets itself as the movie capital of Mississippi -- "A Time to Kill" and "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" were filmed here -- and the town is trying to attract more. Five years ago, Nissan opened a billion-dollar plant to build cars and trucks on the outskirts of Canton. It employs 3,700, but many residents said they have felt little impact. Nissan donated money and computers to local schools but requires a high school diploma for most jobs, disqualifying many residents in a place where nearly half of all high school students drop out.

There are small banners on the light posts leading into town that read "Rich History, Bright Future," but half a mile from the town's stately square, at the Washco Laundromat, Jennifer Blackmon, 20, said she has been unable to find work for over a year and survives on babysitting money. Blackmon is registered and plans to vote for Obama but said that most of her friends won't bother.

Beyond race, they find little in common with the senator from Illinois, with his Ivy League education and Hawaii childhood. To them, Obama, like Sen. John McCain, sounds just like all the other politicians who have promised to improve their lot but have not.

"The simple fact is they are on TV talking about what they are going to do, but nobody is doing what they say they are going to do," Blackmon said. "That's why nobody is voting."

Three washers away in the hot, busy laundromat, Robbie Savage, 37, put a load of clothes and seven quarters in a washing machine. Savage, who is white and voted for President Bush in 2004, said she hadn't bothered to change her voter registration from Alabama, where she lived four years ago.

"I don't think either of them know what's going on here," she said. "They need to come here and find out."

What's going on, Savage said, is her neighbor, who drove a backhoe for Nissan, was laid off two weeks ago. Her husband lost his logging job and had to work for less money laying pipe. Savage cleans homes and does landscaping for families in Madison, a wealthier community 25 minutes away. She heard the talk in Washington about lowering gas prices, but so far as she can tell, that's all it ended up as -- talk.

"When the politicians say they are going to do something, they need to do it and show the people," Savage said.

LaShayla Allen, 31, a preschool teacher, said she sees the malaise among young people, who in Canton have only a sparsely equipped Boys & Girls Club to occupy their time. With little else to do, they hang out in the streets.

"They don't really have hope to do better," she said. "Canton is all they see. . . . They see that their mother didn't graduate, so they don't graduate. My momma doesn't vote, so I'm not going to vote."

Allen said she will vote for Obama, but after watching the debate Friday night, she said neither candidate spoke to what concerns most folks in Canton, where gasoline cost $3.68 a gallon last week.

"I don't think they touched on what's happening with the economy now," she said. "When they get elected, what are some hands-on things they will do?"

After the first service at Greater Faith Calvary Pentecostal Church, Keith Warfield, a bail bondsman and associate minister, said that distrust of the political process has even seeped into the church pews. It is the reason his wife, LaTasha, refuses to vote.

"She believes they are going to do what's best for Washington, not what's best for the people. Most people are pretty much numb to politicians and their lies after being lied to so many times," said Warfield, who did not watch the first presidential debate but plans to vote for Obama. "I don't know if McCain or Obama can fix what's messed up now. A lot of issues, if God doesn't intervene, it can't be fixed."

That kind of pessimism is a long way from the sense of possibility many older residents remember feeling from the days of the civil rights movement, when Canton was a focus of the Mississippi Freedom Summer movement that inspired and registered thousands of black voters and got them to the polls.

Chinn, the Democratic Party chairman, maintains hope that blacks will return to that level of engagement. It is a long shot, he acknowledges, but it is possible with greatly increased black voter turnout and some support from whites to win Madison County for Obama. It requires rousing the unregistered voters in Canton in the next week and giving the registered ones a reason to trust again and turnout.

"You get a feeling every 300 or 400 years," Chinn said, "that you might get a blessing."

By Krissah Williams Thompson, The Washington Post, September 28, 2008

The brain trust of Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign knew three things as their motorcade lurched through Manhattan traffic on the way to the Morgan Library and Museum on Wednesday afternoon for what was supposed to be two hours of intensive debate preparation.

They knew that their candidate faced slumping public poll numbers and a fresh media assault about his top campaign aide's connection to the mortgage industry. They knew that time was running out to get McCain ready for a debate on Friday in Mississippi.

And they knew that the economic bailout plan on Capitol Hill was becoming a crisis. For 24 hours, it was all McCain focused on, calling congressional colleagues, conferring with his staffers and watching as his campaign was flooded with angry comments from members of the public who opposed the $700 billion rescue package.

Wednesday morning was the last straw. A group of economic advisers privately told McCain that the situation was more dire than he realized. "They basically said, 'John, you're running for president. Can't you do something?' " said one participant in the meeting.

The 90 minutes inside the library was supposed to have been a formal rehearsal. Instead, there was chaos.

McCain frantically dialed his Senate aides, seeking the latest on the bailout negotiations, while his top lieutenants -- Mark Salter, Rick Davis, Steve Schmidt and Charlie Black -- scrambled to engineer one of the most unprecedented moments in presidential election history: McCain's declaration that he would "suspend" his campaign and seek to delay Friday's debate.

McCain had raised the possibility of returning to Washington the night before, during somber briefings by senior economic adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin in McCain's New York Hilton hotel room.

Now, he was in full Senator McCain mode, say those around him, convinced that his presence in Washington could help avert a financial crisis while showcasing his reputation for bipartisanship and his ability to make things happen. Aides warned of the political risk -- there was no guarantee that he could make things better -- but McCain waved them off.

"We are in an unprecedented situation," Schmidt told reporters moments after McCain made his four-minute statement. "Senator McCain is doing what he believes is the right and appropriate thing to do here."

The decision to confront the economic crisis with a dramatic gesture was vintage McCain -- bold, swaggering, surprising -- and held out the possibility of a game-changing moment as a political byproduct. But it also highlighted the differences with Barack Obama's calm and steady campaign. McCain seemed to be lurching from one strategy to the next, defensively reacting to events while trying to regain his footing on a subject that had been difficult for him.

It was as if all of his election-year demons were haunting him at the same time: more attacks on his top aides, bad poll numbers that drag down enthusiasm and a return to a subject that has bedeviled him.

An article in the New York Times on Monday raised anew the matter of Davis's ties to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac just as the Republican campaign was airing television ads slamming Obama for the same.

On a conference call with reporters, Schmidt vented his rage, calling the Times "a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign."

Two days later, a national poll by The Washington Post and ABC News brought more bad news: a nine-point lead for Obama, the biggest since the two officially became their parties' nominees.

But the return to Washington on Thursday brought a new low for the campaign. The White House meeting McCain had called for devolved into dissension and argument. One McCain adviser said the senator walked into a Democratic "buzz saw."

McCain's ability to reach across the aisle and bring his colleagues to consensus -- something he brags about repeatedly on the campaign trail -- appeared to have vanished Thursday.

"Thursday was a disaster," said a top aide who had been part of the planning. "The vision on Wednesday did not play out as we thought."

Throughout the day, Democrats held one news conference after another to denounce McCain as the agent of the chaos, accusing him of instigating the collapse of talks that had seemed close.

At the same time, Democrats and Republicans alike described McCain as oddly quiet at the White House, a far cry from the hard-charging senator who was at the center of debates over detainee torture and judges.

No one stood up for McCain, with Republicans on the Hill offering faint praise at best for their nominee. Later, aides said McCain was purposely quiet. "In a meeting characterized by finger-pointing and partisan divides, he chose not to engage in an unproductive conversation," one senior adviser said.

McCain returned to his Crystal City condominium at 6:30 p.m. and spent some time preparing for a debate that he wasn't sure he would attend.

At 11 p.m. Holtz-Eakin returned to campaign headquarters after talks broke down again. A colleague described him as "a beaten man" as both watched the grim news play across the cable television channels.

But by the time McCain woke up Friday morning, he and his top advisers had reassessed the need for the senator's ongoing presence in the negotiations.

In the wake of Thursday's "disaster," McCain was no longer interested in remaining locked in negotiations. He spent only 90 minutes on Capitol Hill on Friday, most of it in conversations with House Republicans, trying to persuade them to rejoin talks with Democrats.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner was "really pissed," said one participant in the meeting with McCain. Boehner felt as if he had been set up for an "assault" at the White House, the participant said.

"McCain dials him back," a top aide said. "Explains how it was important for something to be done."

McCain's discomfort with the $700 billion plan was clear, but throughout the week, he refused to be pinned down by either side. "He didn't advocate for a particular group or plan. He advocated for the right process and is pleased that it appears it's underway," an adviser said.

Once Boehner had announced plans to name a negotiator Friday morning, McCain returned to his Arlington County headquarters and prepared to leave for the debate in Mississippi.

At 11:49 a.m., McCain's campaign alerted the media to gather at 12:30 for the trip to Oxford, officially restarting the campaign and abandoning efforts to delay the first presidential debate.

McCain arrived at the debate site several hours before its 9 p.m. start, having flown to Memphis, Tenn., and boarded his Straight Talk bus for the 1 1/2- hour drive to the University of Mississippi.

But despite all the chaos of the week, and the last-minute arrival -- or, perhaps, because of it -- McCain was especially aggressive during the debate, describing Obama as a neophyte who "doesn't understand" the issues that the next president will face.

McCain advisers proclaimed themselves pleased by their candidate's performance, saying it will help to shift the campaign discussion away from the difficult week that just ended.

"It was a very tough debate, but I don't think our candidate went over the line," Salter said. "He stayed on offense in a respectful way."

But the campaign was not quite ready to move on this weekend. McCain flew back to Washington early Saturday, canceling an Ohio visit so he could remain part of the bailout negotiations.

But McCain did not go to Capitol Hill, preferring to make calls from his headquarters.

"He can effectively do what he needs to do by phone," Salter said. "He's calling members on both sides, talking to people in the administration, helping out as he can."

By Michael D. Shear, The Washington Post, September 28, 2008

For months, the confrontation mounted, a face-off that arguably held in the balance the fates of two of Alaska's biggest industries. On one side were companies hoping to open Pebble Mine at a huge gold and copper reserve adjacent to one of the world's largest salmon runs, Bristol Bay. On the other side were fishermen and environmentalists pushing a referendum that would make it harder for the mine to open.

The two sides spent more than $10 million -- unprecedented for such efforts in Alaska -- and throughout it all, the state's highly popular first-term governor, Sarah Palin, held back. Alaska law forbids state officials from using state resources to advocate on ballot initiatives.

Then, six days before the Aug. 26 vote, with the race looking close, Palin broke her silence. Asked about the initiative at a news conference, she invoked "personal privilege" to give an opinion. "Let me take my governor's hat off for just a minute here and tell you, personally, Prop. 4 -- I vote no on that," she said. "I have all the confidence in the world that [the Department of Environmental Conservation] and our [Department of Natural Resources] have great, very stringent regulations and policies already in place. We're going to make sure that mines operate only safely, soundly."

Palin's comments rocked the contest. Within a day, the pro-mining coalition fighting the referendum had placed full-page ads with a picture of the governor and the word "NO." The initiative went down to defeat, with 57 percent of voters rejecting it.

Three days later, Palin was named Republican Sen. John McCain's running mate, throwing Alaska into a media frenzy. But the fallout has lingered from an episode that may stand as one of the most consequential in Palin's 21-month tenure. The state ethics panel is examining whether her comments violated the law against state advocacy on ballot measures; it had already ruled that a state Web site was improperly slanted toward mining interests.

Opponents of the referendum say Palin's intervention showed her willingness to speak up for what she saw as the state's best interests, even if it upset many Alaskans. "It was very positive," said John Shively, chief executive of Pebble Partnership, a consortium of Vancouver-based Northern Dynasty and multinational mining giant Anglo American that is planning the mine. "She's very popular as governor, and so it certainly never hurts to have a popular governor on your side."

The initiative's supporters, stunned by Palin's late intervention, say it demonstrated her bias in favor of development, even when it threatens an industry that supports thousands of Alaskans -- including Palin's husband, Todd, a part-time commercial fisherman who grew up near Bristol Bay.

For Palin to intervene as she did, with a brief, seemingly off-the-cuff statement just days before the election, also showed a lack of serious engagement on complex and important issues, initiative supporters say. Palin, they say, was simply going on the word of officials in her administration that the existing regulations sufficed, without taking into account their possible biases: Her natural resources commissioner hails from the mining industry, and mining companies directly subsidize some regulators' salaries.

"She has this great faith that nothing will go wrong, which gave her a false sense of security, so she went off a little half-cocked" and spoke out, said Tim Bristol, Alaska program director for Trout Unlimited.

McCain campaign spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton, Palin's former press secretary, defended the governor's intervention. "From the moment Governor Palin took office, she made it clear she supports responsible resource development," Stapleton said. "On the issue of the possible development of Pebble Mine -- this is not about whether you are for or against development, because they haven't even submitted a permit; this is about process and ensuring that any company that wants to come to Alaska and develop our resources is at the very least provided the opportunity to avail themselves of the state's process."

Most irksome to initiative proponents was Palin's effort to cast her intervention as "personal."

"We were just like, 'When does she have her hat on and when does she have it off?' " Bristol said. Former governor Tony Knowles, a Democrat who lost to Palin in 2006, went further and said she may have violated the law against using state resources to advocate on initiatives. He said he never took such a decisive stand on a ballot initiative.

"She says, 'I'm going to take off my governor's hat,' but the only reason the press was there was that they were called to a press conference by the governor," he said. "Being governor is not a costume -- you either are the governor or not."

Shively said it is "absolute balderdash" to question Palin's right to oppose the measure. Yet some other opponents of the referendum said they were surprised she spoke out. "I was delighted, absolutely delighted, but I don't know if it was the right thing for her to do," said Cynthia Toohey, who co-owns an Alaska mine and chaired the opposition coalition. "I've lived in the state 30 years, and I don't believe I've ever heard a governor come out for or against an initiative like that."

The same week that Palin voiced her views, Alaska's Public Offices Commission ordered revisions to an informational Web site set up by the state. The site stated that the initiative's proposed new regulations were "general and less precise" than existing law and that they might lead to limiting operations at existing mines. Initiative supporters said the Web site echoed the mining industry's talking points.

Mining companies are proceeding with planning for Pebble Mine and hope to apply for permits in a year. Discovered in 1988, the site is the largest gold and copper deposit in the country. Supporters, who include many Native Alaskan leaders, say the mine would provide jobs for struggling rural Alaska and note that mining yields $200 million a year in state tax revenue.

But the mine would sit on Bristol Bay, a fishing paradise where 31 million sockeye salmon worth $108 million were caught last year. Opponents consider it too risky to construct an open-pit mine, as well as the world's largest dam to hold mining waste, so close to the valuable fishing grounds. The defeated initiative would have addressed their concern, barring any new large metals mine from releasing chemicals that would damage salmon, a standard not included in current law.

Fishing employs more people than any other Alaska industry -- 12,000 mostly seasonal jobs in Bristol Bay alone, compared with 5,500 mining jobs statewide. But the mining industry has more lobbying clout. In the referendum fight, the pro-mining coalition easily outspent its opposition.

Mining interests have courted Palin since her inauguration. Northern Dynasty contributed to her inaugural fund, and other mining companies have offered gifts and paid travel expenses for Palin's husband to go on fact-finding trips.

Palin suggested in her campaign and early in her tenure that she would withhold judgment on Pebble Mine. In a campaign questionnaire, she said that "as part of a Bristol Bay fishing family myself, I would not support any resource development that would endanger the most sensitive and productive fishery in the world." In a September 2007 interview with the Anchorage Daily News, she repeated that "Pebble Mine will not be permitted on our watch" if it hurts the salmon grounds, but she added that "we can't go in there with a preconceived notion that Pebble Mine should or shouldn't be permitted."

Environmentalists saw a bad omen when Palin's administration urged legislators not to toughen a regulation that the previous governor, Frank Murkowski (R), had loosened to allow some levels of toxicity in streams when salmon are not present. Political strategist Danny Consenstein, a leader of the pro-initiative team, said he suspected that Palin eventually came out against the initiative to maintain her Republican standing in a state where the party has long supported the use of natural resources.

"This is kind of a litmus test," he said. "If you're against the mining industry, you're anti-Alaskan. She's a Republican governor, and she's got to show she's pro-development."

A week before the vote, Palin spoke with initiative opponent Mead Treadwell, the chairman of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. He sensed that the governor was seeing things his way. "Palin said, 'I can't take a position, but if anyone asks me what I think, I'd say that I don't like it,' " Treadwell recalled. "And about an hour later, someone asked her."

She stated her opposition without warning Rick Halford, a conservative Republican and former state senator. A main initiative supporter, he had worked hard for Palin's election. The two had talked during the summer about Pebble, and "she was cautious and trying to figure it out at that point," he said.

Art Hackney, a political consultant and director of Alaskans for Clean Water, speculated that Palin may have been irked by complaints about the biased language on the state Web site. "It was her way of waving her wand, as she is wont to do," he said, ". . . and poof, undercut this effort with one fell swoop."

By Alec MacGillis, The Washington Post, September 28, 2008

John McCain wore the more presidential tie -- that much can be said for him -- but Barack Obama displayed the more presidential temperament, or the kind of demeanor people presumably would want in a president, when the two candidates met at the University of Mississippi last night for their first debate of the campaign.

Both men seemed well equipped in terms of facts and figures -- especially, as one would expect, dollar figures -- and neither made an outrageous blunder, although McCain did misidentify the new president of Pakistan. More critically, he came across as condescending and even rude to his opponent, a bit of bad behavior especially evident because Obama may have overdone the fair-minded bit in many of his remarks and answers.

Imperiously enough, McCain -- who had threatened not to show up for the debate because of America's financial crisis -- seemed determined to avoid even looking at Obama as the debate went on, although they did shake hands at the beginning and end. Many of McCain's answers were preceded with belittling references to Obama as if he were talking to a college freshman way out of his depth: "I'm afraid Senator Obama doesn't understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy," was one typical remark.

Obama supporters must have been displeased, then, to hear their candidate keep agreeing with McCain, a case perhaps of sportsmanlike conduct run amok. Doesn't Obama want to win?

On the matter of congressional earmarks and wasteful spending, Obama began one answer with, "Well, Senator McCain is absolutely right . . ." and later, on an issue related to the Iraq war: "Senator McCain is absolutely right . . ." etc., etc.

After all the nice-guy stuff from Obama, which may have reached self-defeating levels, it's perhaps not surprising that the most, perhaps only, electrifying moment of the debate was when he finally told McCain he was wrong -- three times in quick and effective succession. This was during debate about the origins of the war in Iraq. "You were wrong" about saying the war would be quick and easy, Obama charged, his voice rising. "You were wrong" about finding weapons of mass destruction, he continued. And there was one more "you were wrong" for good measure.

Obama was showing something that his personal appearances have too often lacked: passion. There was strong conviction behind his words, whether one agreed with them or not, and a welcome assertiveness. "You were wrong" was an effectively simple declarative sentence, not bogged down in qualifiers the way some of his sentences tend to be. "We've got to look at bringing that war to a close," he said of Iraq; why not just, "We've got to end that war"?

Although Obama was "crisper" than usual, as one commentator noted after the debate, he still may not have been crisp enough. His oratorical skills when giving speeches in vast venues have been amply demonstrated. But in debates and conversations, when he ad-libs, he sometimes seems to be weighing his answers almost too carefully, defusing his own remarks by diffusing them.

Democrat Paul Begala, one of CNN's army of pundits, criticized both candidates for the way they handled questions on the economy. The whole debate was supposed to deal with foreign policy, but as the economy shuddered and crumbled during the week, it was wisely decided to devote about a third of the debate to that crisis. But as Begala said, a stranger to this planet tuning in the debate wouldn't have known from the candidates' answers and attitudes that America is in the midst of what has been called the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression.

Instead their answers were on the theoretical side, with no real sense of urgency. The folks out there in television land, losing their homes to foreclosure or seeing their retirement nest eggs obliterated, deserved more thoughtful and heartfelt answers.

The debate was moderated by public television's Jim Lehrer, who did a very accomplished job, willing to interrupt or challenge the candidates when they danced around an issue rather than addressing it. His first question was "Where do you stand on the financial recovery plan" now being debated in Washington. Both candidates merely reiterated economic policies from past speeches, with McCain preceding his response with a self-serving salute to Ted Kennedy, who was hospitalized earlier in the day.

Obama began his response with the usual bromide about America being "at a defining moment in our history." Yes yes, but how will we pay the mortgage when the interest rate goes up for the umpteenth time next month?

Lehrer took control. After the meandering palaver from the two men he said pointedly, "Let's go back to my question" and repeated it.

Since all three networks had access to the same basic pool video, some networks tried to dress up the picture with identifying decoration. NBC and CNN both had annoying animated graphics in the lower right-hand corners of the screen, just the thing for people who want to watch letters dance or globes spin around, distracting to everyone else. CNN had mercifully ditched its ticker-tape of fun facts, but replaced it with a chart that supposedly showed reactions from a sample group to the candidates' performances. The chart was hard to read and essentially useless.

CBS armed a test group of viewer-voters with "joy sticks" to measure their responses to various moments of the debate, but this gimmick also proved to be of little help. A CBS reporter interviewed one man sitting in the room; the man said he thought McCain looked "stressed." And that was that. The research measurement was done by Nielsen Media Research, it was pointed out, the same people who rate television shows. That raised the discomforting specter of equating presidential candidates with sitcoms, soap operas and reality junk.

This was reality -- the realest kind of reality -- and the debate was, for the most part, encouragingly civilized and not flawed with frivolous name-calling. As NBC's able Chuck Todd put it, "no lipstick on a pig" nonsense. If McCain had been more civil, and Obama were more combative and fervent, it would have been better still.

By Tom Shales, The Washington Post, September 27, 2008

Credit Crisis Has Given Obama a Distinct Edge

In the two weeks that the Wall Street financial crisis has dominated the political debate, the presidential race has shifted from what had been essentially a dead heat to one in which Sen. Barack Obama has opened up a narrow but perceptible advantage nationally, as well as in a number of battleground states.

The burden now falls on Sen. John McCain to reverse the effects of the focus on the economy, and to keep the contest close enough so that a dominant debate performance, a gaffe by Obama or some outside event can shift the momentum back to him.

Although Friday's debate in Oxford, Miss., produced no outright winner, strategists in both parties said the coming weeks, which will include three more debates -- two between McCain and Obama and the third between vice presidential candidates Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. -- could be decisive in determining whether the election remains on a trajectory favorable to Obama or shifts back toward too-close-to-call status.

McCain advisers are well aware that the past two weeks have brought a shift in the race, but they say that between now and Election Day, there is plenty of time for the fortunes of the two candidates to change again.

"The first lesson of this campaign, going back to 2007, is not to be panicky or reactive to poll numbers," said McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt. "A few weeks back, we had a clear lead, albeit a narrow one, and there were a lot of people on the Democratic side haranguing the Obama campaign in the sense of panic. We always understood not only would that lead dissipate but bounce back the other way and then bounce back again."

For McCain, the danger is that previously undecided voters will become comfortable that Obama is ready to be president. The longer Obama can hold even a small lead, the more difficult it will be for McCain to reverse it, absent something unexpected happening. McCain's best hope, strategists said, is for the crisis atmosphere around Wall Street and the credit markets to lessen, allowing the campaign debate to focus on other questions as much as the economy. The agreement reached early this morning on Capitol Hill about a Wall Street relief package may help with that.

Schmidt said the campaign will press two arguments as forcefully as possible in the coming days. One is that Obama is not ready to be commander in chief and that, in a time of two wars, "his policies will make the world more dangerous and America less secure." Second, he said, McCain will argue that, in a time of economic crisis, Obama will raise taxes and spending and "will make our economy worse."

Obama signaled yesterday that his focus will be on painting McCain as out of touch on the economy. Appearing at a rally in Greensboro, N.C., Obama ripped into his rival's remarks about the economy during the debate -- but more for what McCain didn't say.

"The truth is, through 90 minutes of debating, John McCain had a lot to say about me, but he had nothing to say about you. He didn't even say the words 'middle class.' Didn't say the words 'working people,' " Obama told a cheering crowd of about 20,000 people on a rainy morning. He later appeared in Fredericksburg, Va., and spoke at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner in Washington.

The middle-class omission also is the subject of an Obama television ad that the campaign rolled out yesterday, asserting: "McCain doesn't get it. Barack Obama does."

McCain, who returned to Washington immediately after the debate, remained largely out of sight yesterday. Aides said he was working the phones with congressional leaders, monitoring the pace of negotiations over a financial rescue package that officials hope to have ready for a vote by the beginning of the week. They argued that without his input, the package under consideration earlier last week was doomed to fail.

But strategists said McCain will be challenged to reverse current trends, particularly in a year in which voters are gloomy about the state of the country and are looking for a change in direction after eight years of President Bush's policies.

"What begins to happen is that the margin that's been in place begins to solidify more and more," said Matthew Dowd, who was Bush's chief strategist in 2004 and is now an independent analyst. "There's only two ways this can go," he added. "It will either solidify with an Obama four- to five- point lead, or it will loosen and go back to close and go back and forth."

Both campaigns launched a war of ads and news releases yesterday as each side claimed victory in their first general-election showdown, held at the University of Mississippi.

The McCain campaign e-mailed four "volumes" of reviews about his performance, described by various pundits and editorial writers as "emphatic," "assured" and "authoritative."

Obama aides said the Democratic nominee cleared a major hurdle with undecided voters by projecting confidence, giving crisp answers and standing his ground when pressed by McCain on a range of foreign policy issues, including the fate of Iraq and Afghanistan and the challenges posed by Russia and Iran.

Overnight polls suggested Obama had won, although the samples in one case were tilted toward Democrats.

Obama and McCain will not debate again until Oct. 7, but Palin and Biden will meet in St. Louis on Thursday for their only debate. Palin had an immediate and positive effect on the race when she was chosen, but that has dissipated over the past two weeks. She struggled through an interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric last week, and polls show rising unfavorable ratings, including among independent female voters. As a result, Palin faces a major test in the debate against the more experienced Biden.

The second presidential debate will have a town hall format, which makes combat between the two candidates more difficult. If the race stands essentially as it does today by the time of the third debate on Oct. 15, strategists predict a fierce and confrontational 90 minutes. By then it will become clear whether McCain made the right decision politically to suspend most campaign activities last week and return to Washington to get involved in the financial package negotiations. Aides hope that, if Congress passes a rescue package, McCain's actions will be seen as having contributed to the deal. More important, they hope an agreement will push the economy story off the front pages for a while.

Their hope is to keep things fluid for the next few weeks.

"You've got to get it over with and start having a normal campaign," one McCain adviser said. "I think you can't make any campaign judgments until this is over.

By Dan Balz and Shailagh Murray, The Washington Post, September 28, 2008