While Senator McCain has not called for a full privatization of Social Security, he has supported the concept of allowing individuals to invest part of their payroll taxes in stock and bonds. But the idea has taken on a new air of political vulnerability because of the upheaval on Wall Street, which Senator Obama has sought to seize on.
Propelled by discontent at Republican handling of the economy in light of the financial crisis, Senator Obama matched his record high of 50 percent in the latest Gallup daily tracking poll, against 44 percent for Senator McCain. Meanwhile, Mr. McCain tried to blame the turmoil on fraud at US mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
It turns out that the Republican enthusiasm for Sarah Palin is just as superficial as she is. They were so eager for someone to cheer for (because they really don’t like John McCain) that they dove face first into the Palin mirage. But, on the issues, even they worry about her.
After a week of economic turmoil and his damaging remark on Monday that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” Senator McCain aggressively sought to regain his footing. Battling to distance himself from the Bush administration and blame for the economic instability, Mr. McCain also called for the firing of SEC chief Christopher Cox.
Senator McCain lied first, in a Spanish-language ad that accused Senator Obama of helping to kill immigration reform last year, by voting for amendments that supposedly doomed a bipartisan bill. Mr. Obama’s retaliatory ad, also in Spanish, was just as fraudulent. The country needs to hear better answers, stated clearly and forthrightly.
As John McCain worked his way through Florida and Ohio this week as the Republican presidential nominee, he was a candidate transformed. He unsmilingly raced through a series of relatively brief speeches, reading often from a teleprompter, and served up a diet of the kind of sound-bite attacks that he used to dismiss with an eye roll.
Sarah Palin’s good looks are all very well if you are single and your dating pool consists only of vice-presidential candidates. But for the rest of us the question we’d ask is less likely to be “are you lonesome tonight?” and more likely to be “what are you going to do about this flailing economy? Iraq? Pakistan? Afghanistan? The health system?”
Nobody had warned the Ohio crowd that John McCain had just morphed into a new persona — a raging populist demanding more regulation of the nation’s financial system. Unfortunately McCain’s willingness to make speeches that have nothing to do with his actual beliefs is not matched by an ability to give them.
In a reversal of position, a key Democratic lawmaker said Wednesday he may convene the committee that is conducting the investigation into whether Palin dismissed her public safety commissioner when he would not fire a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce with her sister. This may be the first move in a push to delay the probe.
No Democratic presidential candidate has won Virginia since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, and the selection of Sarah Palin has improved Mr. McCain’s chances of carrying the state. Even so, Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, still clearly sees an opportunity here, and has opened more than 41 offices in the state.