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PRESIDENTIAL WATCH
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(caricatures by
Linda Eddy)
Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2008
GENERAL NEWS HEADLINES with excerpts
McCain suspends campaign
to focus on
the economy;
wants debate delay
McCAIN:
It
has become clear that no consensus has developed to support
the Administration' proposal. I do not believe that the plan on the
table will pass as it currently stands, and we are running out of
time.
Tomorrow morning, I will suspend my campaign and return to Washington after speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative. I have spoken to Senator Obama and informed him of my decision and have asked him to join me.
I am calling on the President to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself. It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem."
Obama camp:
the debate is on...
OBAMA:
I believe that we should continue to have the debate," Obama said. "It's my belief that this is exact time when the American people need to hear form the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsibly for dealing with this mess and I think that it is going to be part of the President’s job to deal with more than one thing at once."
Obama said that unlike McCain, he will not suspend ads, or campaign events scheduled between now and Friday's debate.
Letterman mocks McCain
for
cancelling appearance
Is McCain in driver's seat on bailout bill?
Top congressional Republicans say if McCain does not support the bill, it will likely die...
McCain, Obama agree:
bailout shouldn't reward CEO's
As Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson try to persuade Congress to pass a $700 billion bailout quickly, the men vying to be the next president continue to raise concerns and agreed today on one priority -- Wall Street CEOs shouldn't make out like bandits.
"It is wrong to ask teachers and farmers and small business owners to fill the gas tanks of the helicopters of Wall Street tycoons," Republican John McCain told reporters in Michigan this afternoon. "The senior leaders of any firm that is bailed out should not be making more than the highest paid government official."
Gallup poll shows Obama losing his lead again
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Barack Obama is losing his lead in the Gallup Poll even as the economy teeters. On Tuesday, Obama led John McCain just 47-44 percent, down from a six-point lead just days ago.
Notably, McCain has slashed Obama's lead without moving up in popularity. McCain has stayed at 44 or 45 percent for the last week.
But Obama has fallen from 50 percent.
Rasmussen poll: Obama up by one point
Over the past week, national trends showed a slight improvement for Obama. A week ago, McCain was up by three in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll and now Obama is up by one. This trend is not found in the state polling.
There is no clear reason as to why these battleground state polls remained stable while the national trend moved in Obama’s direction. However, it is worth noting that Obama didn’t really gain ground nationally over the past week. Rather, McCain lost support.
ABC poll showing Obama with 15-point lead
over McCain panned by commenters
"I don't know what poll they are looking at, the ones I have seen are still showing a dead heat.. ABC just spewing BS.."
Gallup Daily poll: Obama 47-McCain 44
THE CANDIDATES:
John McCain & Sarah Palin... today's headlines with excerpts
McCain ad hits Obama/Biden for coal 'pandering'
Palin meets with foreign leaders
Palin,
who met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Colombian President
Álvaro Uribe, engaged in small talk and policy discussions as part of
her effort to augment her foreign policy credentials. Palin, who has
traveled outside North America once, also met with former secretary of
state Henry Kissinger at his New York office.
see also:
Palin bans, then admits reporters to UN meetings
Palin debuts of foreign affairs stage
George Will: Is McCain fit for the presidency?
Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.
It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?
Barack Obama & Joe Biden... today's headlines with excerpts'
Americans oppose bailouts, favor Obama to handle market crisis
By
a margin of 55 percent to 31 percent, Americans say it's not the
government's responsibility to bail out private companies with
taxpayer dollars, even if their collapse could damage the economy,
according to the latest Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll.
Poll respondents say Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama would do a better job handling the financial crisis than Republican John McCain, by a margin of 45 percent to 33 percent. Almost half of voters say the Democrat has better ideas to strengthen the economy than his Republican opponent.
Obama concedes bailout costs may force him to adjust plans
Barack Obama said Tuesday that the huge costs of a financial bailout meant that he probably wouldn't be able to deliver everything he was promising in his campaign, at least not as quickly as he'd hoped.
"Does that mean that I can do everything that I've called for in this campaign right away? Probably not. I think we're going to have to phase it in. And a lot of it's going to depend on what our tax revenues look like," Obama said on NBC.
Among the staff helping are senior advisers David Axelrod, Anita Dunn and Robert Gibbs, with Washington lawyer Greg Craig playing the role of McCain. Craig, a foreign policy expert and member of President Clinton's impeachment defense team, also played President Bush in John Kerry's preparations in 2004.
One goal will be to make sure Obama gets to the point quicker than he tended to in the primary debates, an aide said. The often loquacious Illinois senator has been delivering snappier soundbites recently on the campaign trail at the encouragement of his campaign advisers...
Biden flubs FDR, television dates
"When
the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television
and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He
said, 'Look, here's what happened,'" Senator Obama's running mate told
the "CBS Evening News." Except Republican Herbert Hoover was in office
when the stock market crashed in October 1929. There also was no
television at the time; TV wasn't introduced to the public until a
decade later, at the 1939 World's Fair.
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