McCain and Obama battle over taxes in second debate
McCain proposes new program for homeowners
Candidates take questions from the audience
The presidential rivals in the Nov 4 election differed frequently with only rare flashes of the open rancor that has marked their recent rhetoric on the campaign trail. -- PHOTO: REUTERS
NASHVILLE (Tennessee) - REPUBLICAN John McCain failed to land the decisive blows he needed to revive his lagging U.S. presidential hopes as he clashed in a debate with Democrat Barack Obama over the causes and cures for a massive financial crisis that has frightened Americans.
Tuesday's debate, the second of three, came as polls show Mr Obama building a small but significant lead with time running out for Mr McCain just four weeks before the Nov 4 election. It also came as both campaigns exchanged some of the harshest personal attacks of the race.
NASHVILLE - US PRESIDENTIAL candidates John McCain and Barack Obama both mentioned investor Warren Buffett as a possible pick for Treasury secretary on Tuesday but both spoke in only general terms about the qualities they would seek for that job.
'It is going to have be somebody who inspires trust and confidence,' Mr McCain, a Republican, said during the second of three debates the two candidates are taking part in ahead of the Nov 4 election.
WASHINGTON - HERE with a selection of quotes from
Tuesday's second US presidential debate between Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican John McCain:
THE ECONOMIC CRISIS Mr McCain 'Americans are angry, they're upset, and they're a little fearful. It's our job to fix the problem. I have a plan to fix this problem.'
US PRESIDENTIAL debates are often as much about body language and aesthetics as they are about issues and substance.
White House hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain went back and forth in Tuesday's debate, often pointing at each other in accusatory fashion while walking around the debate space, speaking directly to the assembled audience.
NASHVILLE (Tennessee) - REPUBLICAN John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama battled over taxes and the best way to help struggling middle-class workers on Tuesday during a sometimes tense presidential debate that highlighted a wide gap in their economic approaches.
With US financial institutions reeling under what Mr Obama called the worst crisis since the Great Depression, the presidential rivals in the Nov 4 election differed frequently with only rare flashes of the open rancor that has marked their recent rhetoric on the campaign trail.
Both candidates shied away from such rancor as they answered domestic and international policy questions from voters in the audience at Belmont University. Instead they repeated many of the points they made in their Sept 26 debate - which did not change the course of a race clearly moving Mr Obama's way.
The town-hall style format was seen as an advantage for Mr McCain, who does best answering questions before small audiences. He appeared comfortable as he addressed audience members directly and in interacting with Mr Obama. In the first debate, he avoided looking at his rival.
But instant polls taken after the debate gave the advantage to Mr Obama. Fifty-four percent of those surveyed in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp national poll said Mr Obama did the best job in the debate, with 30 per cent saying Mr McCain performed better. The telephone poll of 675 debate watchers had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
Such results gave a boost to Mr Obama as he headed Wednesday for a rally in Indiana, a Republican-leaning state where polls show him within a few percentage points of Mr McCain. Democratic vice presidential candidate, Delaware Sen Joe Biden, who took several days off to mourn the death of his wife's mother, was to campaign in Florida.
Mr McCain and his running mate, Alaska Govenor Sarah Palin, were planning stops in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania and Ohio, which Mr McCain needs to win to have any chance of overtaking Mr Obama.
In the debate, Mr Obama quickly looked to link Mr McCain to President George W. Bush, describing the financial crisis as the 'final verdict on the failed economic policies of the last eight years' that Mr Bush pursued and Mr McCain supported.
He contended that Mr Bush, Mr McCain and others had favored deregulation of the financial industry, predicting that would 'let markets run wild and prosperity would rain down on all of us. It didn't happen.'
Mr McCain blamed Mr Obama and Democrats for the collapse of mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which helped trigger the unfolding economic crisis.
'They're the ones that, with the encouragement of Senator Obama and his cronies and his friends in Washington, that went out and made all these risky loans, gave them to people that could never afford to pay back,' Mr McCain said.
Mr Obama responded: 'I've got to correct a little bit of Senator McCain's history, not surprisingly. ... In fact, Senator McCain's campaign chairman's firm was a lobbyist on behalf of Fannie Mae, not me.'
Mr McCain campaign manager Rick Davis has a stake in a Washington lobbying firm that received thousands of dollars a month from Freddie Mac until recently.
Mr McCain, a 72-year-old veteran senator, entered the debate in a precarious position. He has long faced the difficult task of persuading voters to elect another Republican president despite the intense unpopularity of Mr Bush after eight years in the White House.
That challenge has deepened with retirement accounts evaporating, tens of thousands of homes in foreclosure, unemployment climbing and the stock market plunging - including a 5 per cent loss Tuesday.
Polls show voters have more confidence in Mr Obama's ability to handle the economy. But his inability to lock up the race also reflects how many Americans remain uncertain about Mr Obama, a 47-year-old first-term senator seeking to become the United States' first black president.
Mr Obama looked to strike a balance between appearing sufficiently knowledgeable to look presidential, while avoiding long-winded, academic-style answers that has led some Americans to see him as aloof.
He stressed his understanding of the plight of everyday Americans worried about their jobs, falling home values and health care. He talked about his mother fighting with insurance companies while she was dying of cancer at age 53.
Mr McCain offered a major new proposal to help hard-pressed Americans: a US$300 billion (S$440 billion) program for the US government to buy up bad home mortgages directly from homeowners and mortgage providers.
'It's my proposal, it's not Senator Obama's proposal, it's not President Bush's proposal,' he said.
Mr McCain's pledge to have the government help individual homeowners avoid foreclosure went beyond the details of the bailout that recently cleared Congress. The legislation allows but does not require Treasury to purchase mortgages directly. Mr Obama has said previously that idea should be studied, and his campaign contended Mr McCain's proposal was not a new one.
On national security, the candidates repeated familiar positions on Iraq. Mr McCain chided Mr Obama for opposing the buildup of US troops in Iraq that is credited, in part, with reducing violence.
Mr McCain said his rival 'was wrong about Iraq and the surge. He was wrong about Russia when they committed aggression against Georgia. And in his short career he does not understand our national security challenges. We don't have time for on the job training'.
Mr Obama countered with a trace of sarcasm that he did not understand some things - like how the United States could face the challenge it does in Afghanistan after spending years and hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq.
'I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us.'
Mr McCain accused Mr Obama of foolishly threatening to invade Pakistan and said, 'I'm not going to telegraph my punches, which is what Sen. Obama did.'
Mr Obama responded by challenging Mr McCain's steadiness. 'This is a guy who sang bomb, bomb, bomb Iran, who called for the annihilation of North Korea.'
The candidates avoided the vitriol of recent days which included attacks on Mr Obama's links to William Ayers, a former radical who engaged in violent acts 40 years ago. Mr Obama's campaign responded by releasing a video about Mr McCain's involvement in a financial scandal two decades ago.
The candidates were polite, but the strain of the campaign showed. During a discussion of an energy bill, Mr McCain referred to Mr Obama as 'that one,' rather than speaking his name.
Their insults were more on issues than on character. Mr McCain quipped at one point that trying to pin down Mr Obama's tax plan was like 'trying to nail Jell-O (gelatin) to the wall'.
Mr Obama shot back, 'Sen. McCain, I think the Straight-Talk Express lost a wheel on that one,' referring to the name Mr McCain has applied to his campaign bus and jet.
The audience was selected by Gallup, the polling organisation, and was split three ways among voters leaning toward McCain, those leaning toward Mr Obama and those undecided.
Moderator Tom Brokaw, the veteran NBC television newsman, screened their questions and also chose others that had been submitted online.
The third and final presidential debate of the campaign will be on Oct 15. -- AP
