America's voters, feeling the squeeze at the supermarket and the petrol pump, and worried about losing their jobs, homes and health insurance, could hardly be expected to be amused.

Ever since then, Mr McCain has gone out on a limb to stress that he feels the pain of the working-class man. So far, not much success.

His concerted bid this week to establish himself as the better candidate to steer the economy ended on a sour note.

On Monday, his campaign tried to burnish his credentials with a testimonial signed by 300 economists saying they supported his broad economic plan of cutting government spending and corporate taxes, balancing the Budget and pushing for free trade.

But on closer scrutiny, it emerged that the economists disagreed with the details. They did not expect Mr McCain to be able to balance the Budget at the end of his first term.

And many dissociated themselves from his 'gas tax holiday' - a plan to waive federal taxes on petrol during the summer to make it cheaper.

Things did not get better. On Thursday, Mr McCain had to distance himself from his senior economic adviser, former senator Phil Gramm, who referred in an interview to the economic slowdown as 'a mental recession' and called the US a nation of whiners. Mr McCain strongly disavowed the comments but the damage was done.

In the course of the week, he also managed to miss a Senate vote on a health-related Bill and called the US social security funding system an 'absolute disgrace' for supporting present- day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers.

Critics said it was a harsh assessment of a key American system of providing retirement benefits that has been in place since the Great Depression of the 1930s and it showed he did not understand the 'basics' of government.

Mr McCain's strong support for free trade has turned into an electoral disadvantage too, with public support for globalisation and open trade touching a record low.

He raised the issue of trade before workers at a car parts supplier in Detroit, while pitching his plan to create jobs in the region. The response was predictably less than warm.

The Democratic National Party was quick to make the most of what it called Mr McCain's 'disastrous week', with a press conference planned yesterday to show how 'out of touch' he was.

Mr Barack Obama, whose economic policy proposals have not caught the imagination of voters either, has never passed up an opportunity to say that his rival offers 'more of George W. Bush's failed economic policies'.

His premise for economic revival rests on a second dose of a US$50 billion (S$70 billion) stimulus package, spending more on health care, education and worker retraining - the polar opposite of Mr McCain's vow to cut spending.

Mr Obama also drew criticism himself for flip-flopping on an issue with which he had rallied voters in states like Ohio and Michigan, which are suffering from a loss of manufacturing jobs.

During his primary campaign, he had called the world's biggest free trade agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), 'devastating' and a 'big mistake', and threatened to opt out of it unless labour and environmental standards were worked into it. Some labour leaders blame the Nafta for sending US jobs overseas, a claim that many economists dispute.

But in a recent interview with Fortune magazine, Mr Obama admitted that his anti-trade rhetoric had been 'overheated and amplified'.

The McCain campaign described the remarks as 'hypocrisy' at best.

Economists are divided over who has the sounder plan to trigger a revival but opinion polls show that Mr Obama gets ranked ahead when voters are asked who would handle the economy better.

bhagya@sph.com.sg

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