Obama takes aim at McCain on economy amid Wall Street upheaval
Published Tuesday September 16th, 2008
WASHINGTON - "It's the economy, stupid."
That was the famous mantra coined by Bill Clinton strategist James Carville in 1992, when he constantly reminded his presidential candidate to focus on issues that mattered to Americans - their jobs, their financial security and their standard of living.
Clinton trounced a stunned George H. W. Bush by fixating on the faltering economy throughout the campaign.
Barack Obama appears to be taking a page from the Carville handbook this week amid the troubles of two of the most storied U.S. investment companies - Merrill Lynch & Co. and Lehman Brothers.
The Democrat is taking dead aim at John McCain and the Republicans on the economy, in particular the Arizona senator's claim on Monday that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" even as the stock market was in a dizzying freefall.
"It's not so much that Obama went off message - in fact, his consistent message has involved bread-and-butter economic issues, and saying again and again that McCain isn't much different than Bush," Patrick Egan, assistant professor of politics at New York University, said Tuesday.
"What hasn't been consistent is how that message has been received and communicated by the media. The McCain campaign has been pretty successful at throwing up issues that distract and capture the attention of the media and the public, including choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate."
"But now we've got these events that neither side can control that are putting the economy on the front burner, and that has to play to Obama's advantage."
The Obama campaign was striking while the iron was hot on Tuesday, releasing a television ad that asks: "How can John McCain fix our economy if he doesn't understand it's broken?"
The ad followed a blistering attack from Obama on the campaign trail about McCain's initial insistence that the U.S. economy was sound.
"Senator, what economy are you talking about?" Obama said.
"What's more fundamental than the ability to find a job that pays the bills and can raise a family? ... What's more fundamental than knowing that you'll have a roof over your head at the end of the day?"
McCain was quick to backtrack on Tuesday morning, calling for a federal commission to examine the country's economic crisis, but blaming the mess largely on greedy and corrupt Wall Street financiers.
That too was ridiculed by Obama while campaigning in Colorado.
"Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book: you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem. But here's the thing: this isn't 9-11. We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out."
Things got weird for McCain on Tuesday when his top policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, waved his made-in-Canada Blackberry and told reporters that his boss - who has admitted he doesn't know how to use a computer and can't send e-mail - helped create the popular device.
Holtz-Eakin made the remarks when asked what McCain had learned about financial markets after his work as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.
A McCain aide later dismissed the remark as "a boneheaded joke by a staffer."
For the first time since his surprise pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, McCain is on the defensive.
He's been roundly attacked this week not just on the economy, but on some blatantly false statements he's made about Obama, including one suggesting the Illinois senator would tax the middle class if elected president. Obama, in fact, is proposing tax cuts for the middle class.
Even the Republican party's closest friends in the media - Fox News Channel - have been taking the McCain campaign to task. News anchor Megyn Kelly tore a strip off McCain strategist Tucker Bounds over the tax controversy when he appeared on the network on Monday.
"Independent analysts say that claim is false, and if it's false, Tucker, why would John McCain do that? Why wouldn't he just level with the voters?" she asked as Bounds avoided answering the question.
McCain's troubles come after almost two weeks of campaign brouhahas involving remarks about pitbulls, pigs and lipstick that saw him surge in the polls into a dead heat with Obama.
Observers say Obama cannot go wrong by hammering away at the one issue that affects all Americans - rich and poor, black and white, male or female, Republican or Democrat.
"For Obama, this is a huge opportunity - a chance not only to be heard addressing an issue that matters, but also to pivot away from a losing message to one that could actually win him the election," Newsweek's Andrew Romano, who argued that Obama's constant comparisons of McCain to Bush weren't working, wrote on the magazine's website.
Egan says Obama's campaign appears hell-bent on staying on message while taking the high road on more trivial election stories.
He pointed to the US Weekly magazine story on Tuesday about Palin's purchase of a tanning bed for the governor's mansion in Alaska.
"It's a completely irrelevant story, just totally silly, and Obama hasn't touched it. ... The Obama campaign has made a determination to stick to important issues, and an economic crisis will certainly make it easier for them to do that."
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