This is not the first time in the presidential campaign that McCain has appeared to be caught off guard by an economic crisis.
Six months ago, as signs emerged of a slowdown in the housing market, McCain chided Hillary Rodham Clinton, then still competing for the Democratic nomination, for offering a plan to help homeowners facing foreclosure, noting critically that it looked "very expensive."
After McCain was criticized for appearing unsympathetic, he came back several weeks later with a plan he said would help "well-meaning, deserving homeowners" facing foreclosure.
In May, though, McCain was back to attacking government intervention. In a speech to the National Restaurant Assn. in Chicago, he mocked Obama's and Clinton's plans for "more federal regulation, more government control of the economy," according to a text of his remarks.
And in July, when a report showed that the nation had shed 62,000 jobs the month before, McCain issued a statement warning: "We cannot . . . increase regulation."
Just three weeks ago, McCain -- who once said he was "proud to be a foot soldier" in the "Reagan revolution" -- was accepting the Republican presidential nomination with tough rhetoric about bureaucrats and bloated government.
Palin, too, invoked Reagan's famous quip that "government is the problem" as she touted her own record of limiting the role of government as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.
"I reminded people that government is not always the answer," Palin said at a rally in Lee's Summit, Mo., last week. "In fact, too often government is often the problem."
Yet while campaigning in Michigan on Wednesday, McCain twice quoted Roosevelt, calling the president who triumphed over Republicans to create a vast system of regulatory agencies and government programs "one of our great presidents." (McCain was reminding autoworkers at a General Motors plant in Lake Orion that Roosevelt had urged optimism even in the depths of the Great Depression.)
Instead of attacking government, McCain and Palin now routinely call for robust federal action. "We've got to get a more coordinated and a much more stringent oversight regime," Palin said Wednesday in an interview on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes." "Government can play a very, very appropriate role in the oversight."
