John McCain seriously sharpens his rhetoric on the economy
John McCain definitely wanted to start off this week on better rhetorical footing than he did the preceding one, when he gave Democrats a gift-wrapped political present by declaring he viewed the U.S. economy as fundamentally strong.
It was the wrong note on the wrong day and, as The Ticket noted previously, his goal this Monday was to put that comment as far behind him as possible.
So here's what he said on NBC's "Today" show this morning, when discussing the turmoil roiling the nation's financial system: "We are in the most serious crisis since World War II."
Upon reflection, he may have wanted to add the word "economic" between "serious" and "crisis." Offhand, we'd guess that quite a few historians would rate the decision by China to engage in the Korean War, the face-off with the Soviet Union over missiles in Cuba and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as worthy competitors on a list of highly challenging moments since 1945.
Regardless, the economy continued to dominate the campaign dialogue, and The Times' Bob Drogin and Peter Nicholas have the details on extensive comments on it by both McCain and Barack Obama.
-- Don Frederick
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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Next week McCain will recommend that the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial but put up for auction on EBAY. Following that, John will wait to see which way the wind is blowing before embarking that weeks economic direction.
Republican Economics is but a myth. Negative Growth and Downward Spiral are synonymous with Republican't policies.
Posted by: Same Ole Same Ole | September 22, 2008 at 01:04 PM
Don't be fooled again by these Rovian tactics of John McCain. Obama has no economic plan! Obama wanted to bail out the home owner 18 months ago, this would have shored up the economy and the credit of the sub-prime market and we would have avoided this whole stock market mess. But McCain and the Republicans did not want to bail out the home owner (McCain kept calling the home owner a speculator when asked this question). Now that it hit their big business buddies on Wall Street, they are bailing out the speculators. Where is the McCain plan? When your plan is the status quo and rubber stamping the Bush administration I guess you do not need a plan. Don't be fooled, the McCain plans are just more of the same. An independent non-partisan expert analyst that both Obama and McCain agreed to analyzed both the Obama and McCain economic plans. He tore apart the McCain plan essentially as a fraud. McCain will have massive debts and will have to bring spending down to 1950 levels if he does not want to raise taxes, yet when confronted by this McCain still says, it will work. This reminds me of George Bush Senior "read my lips; no new taxes." What did he do? Raise taxes! McCain will to, he has no choice now that the republicans have crashed the economy with deregulation and deficit spending. One thing truthful out of McCain's mouth is that he does not understand economics. Independent for Obama/Biden!! 2008!!
Posted by: IndependentForObama | September 22, 2008 at 05:08 PM