McCain can't find economic footing

GRAND RAPIDS, MICH. — With the economy in turmoil and the country's second-largest insurer faltering, John McCain was unequivocal Tuesday: "We cannot have the taxpayers bail out AIG or anybody else."

By Wednesday, he had changed his mind.

The rapid about-face followed another quick retreat by the Republican presidential nominee earlier this week when he insisted that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" even as one brokerage house filed for bankruptcy, another nearly went under and the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 504 points.

McCain's reversals underscored the difficulty he has had in finding the right response to the deteriorating economy, the issue voters say is most important. The reversals also highlight the contradiction between McCain's oft-repeated campaign message -- that the federal government should largely stay out of the economy -- and his new promises to help voters whose jobs, houses and retirement accounts are disappearing.

In a matter of days, McCain shifted from invoking small-government icon Ronald Reagan to quoting Franklin D. Roosevelt, the architect of the modern regulatory state.

And he and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, dropped their promise, as Palin put it, to "get government out of the way of private-sector progress," and are now pledging "stringent oversight" to deal with "a toxic waste there on Wall Street."

The wildly swinging rhetoric from the McCain campaign has delighted Barack Obama, who just last week was struggling to respond to the enthusiasm whipped up by Palin's unexpected arrival on the national stage.

Campaigning in Nevada on Wednesday, the Democratic nominee mocked McCain's attempts to cast himself as a reformer. "This is somebody who's been in Congress for 26 years, who put seven of the most powerful Washington lobbyists in charge of his campaign," Obama said.

McCain's zigzags on the deepening economic crisis may also be stirring doubts with some voters. Several recent polls suggest that his post-convention lead is slipping away.

The latest New York Times/CBS poll, taken Friday through Tuesday, found that Obama had the support of 48% of registered voters to 43% for McCain, a statistical tie. Voters overwhelmingly indicated the economy was their top issue and that they had more confidence in Obama than in McCain to make the right decisions.

And a CNN/Time/Opinion Research poll, taken Sunday through Tuesday, showed the race deadlocked in some battleground states, including Florida and Ohio.