McCain, Obama at odds on debate delay

Steven R. Hurst , The Associated Press , Washington | Thu, 09/25/2008 3:21 AM | World

Republican John McCain on Wednesday said he was suspending his campaign and would return to Washington to focus on the roiling U.S. financial crisis. He said he asked Democratic opponent Barack Obama to join him in the nation's capital and to agree to a delay in Friday's first presidential debate.

Obama's campaign said he was inclined to go ahead with the debate and the University of Mississippi, which was hosting the event, said it too was moving ahead with preparations because it had "received no notification of any change in the timing or venue."

Even before the Obama campaign said it was inclined to go forward with the face off, Obama spokesman Bill Burton issued a statement saying that McCain made his announcement unilaterally moments after agreeing to joint action by both candidates that was initiated by Obama in a personal phone call to McCain early Wednesday.

"At 8:30 this morning, Senator Obama called Senator McCain to ask him if he would join in issuing a joint statement outlining their shared principles and conditions for the Treasury proposal and urging Congress and the White House to act in a bipartisan manner to pass such a proposal. At 2:30 this afternoon, Senator McCain returned Senator Obama's call and agreed to join him in issuing such a statement. The two campaigns are currently working together on the details," Burton's statement said.

McCain warned of dire consequences if Congress did not act quickly even the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate were struggling to find agreement on a $700 billion bailout package sent to Capitol Hill this week by the Bush administration.

"If we do not, credit will dry up, with devastating consequences for our economy. People will no longer be able to buy homes and their life savings will be at stake. Businesses will not have enough money to pay their employees. If we do not act, ever corner of our country will be impacted. We cannot allow this to happen," he said in a statement he read in New York City.

The debates between the candidates were becoming increasingly important as voters face economic uncertainty as deep as any since 1932, when the country turned to the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Great Depression.

There was evidence the turmoil was helping Obama, as a new Washington Post-ABC News survey released Wednesday showed him nine points ahead of his Republican rival, with 52 percent against McCain's 43 percent. A different survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed people favoring the Democrat on the economy, with 47 percent saying he would best handle the financial turmoil, as opposed to 35 percent who favored McCain.

The Pew poll also showed that Americans back the Bush administration's $700 billion bailout plan by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, prompting both candidates to be in rare agreement on the proposal, each demanding Tuesday that it be subject to independent oversight and guarantees that top executives will not be rewarded.

The survey, conducted between Friday and Monday, showed 57 percent of voters believed the government was doing the right thing in dealing with the economic crisis.

McCain has tried to tie Obama to troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and has called on Jim Johnson and Franklin Raines - both Obama supporters and former Fannie Mae executives - to return large "golden parachute" payments they received from the corporations after leaving.

But McCain's campaign manager Ric Davis drew some unwelcome attention in news reports Tuesday that Freddie Mac had been paying $15,000 a month to Davis' lobbying firm until shortly before the takeover.

The money to the Davis firm was on top of more than $30,000 a month that went directly to McCain's campaign chief for five years starting in 2000. The $30,000 a month came from both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which were rescued by the government earlier this month.

The McCain campaign said Davis left the firm - Davis Manafort - and stopped taking salary from the firm in 2006. A person familiar with the contract, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the $15,000 a month in payments to Davis' firm began around the end of 2005 and continued until the past month or so. All the payments were first reported by The New York Times.

McCain's campaign issued a lengthy broadside against the newspaper early Wednesday, calling the report "demonstrably false" and declaring it a "partisan assault aimed at promoting that paper's preferred candidate, Barack Obama."

The response did not address the reported $15,000 month payments to Davis Manafort, but focused on Davis having separated himself from the firm in 2006.

McCain had a full schedule Wednesday, mainly consumed by meetings with the leaders of Georgia, Ukraine and India as world leaders assembled in New York for the U.N. General Assembly.

Early Wednesday, he met with a panel of business executives to discuss the bailout. They included former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, his one-time rival for the Republican nomination, and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman.

He renewed his insistence that the bailout deal should have greater transparency, oversight and CEO accountability to make it acceptable to voters.

His running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, was back at the United Nations on Wednesday, after meeting there with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Colombian leader Alvaro Uribe a day earlier.

The meetings were designed to introduce the once-little-known vice presidential nominee to the world community and to counter claims she has no grounding in foreign affairs.

Obama on Wednesday held a major rally in Florida where he was spending most of his time closeted with aides in preparation for Friday's presidential debate, which will focus on foreign policy.

His running mate Joe Biden, was busy on the campaign trail, questioning McCain's judgment in the Obama campaign's strongest criticism to date about their Republican rival's leadership abilities

Biden listed several examples of what he described as McCain's wrong judgment, such as his contention that the U.S. would be greeted as liberators in Iraq and that the Persian Gulf nation is the central front in the war on terrorism. Biden argued that the president should focus the full U.S. might on al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"John is more than wrong - he is dangerously wrong," Biden said while campaigning in Ohio.

His comments Wednesday were billed by the campaign as a major speech on foreign policy by the veteran chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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