CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA — John McCain and Barack Obama moved aggressively Thursday to seize the mantle of reform amid Wall Street's maelstrom, with McCain saying he would fire the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission and create an agency to overhaul weakened financial firms, and Obama proposing to inject more money into the battered financial system.
The heightened efforts to offer solutions to the chaos in the financial markets showed both presidential candidates struggling to appear decisive and take advantage of the crisis, but without sounding alarmist.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday, October 03, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 94 words Type of Material: Correction
SEC chairman: Articles in Section A on Sept. 19 and 20 about the financial rescue plan said the president could not fire the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The statute governing the SEC does not explicitly give the president the authority to fire the commission's members. However, federal courts have held that the president can remove members of independent commissions like the SEC "for cause," including "inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office." The president can also demote the chairman of the SEC without removing him or her from the commission.
Promising a "proactive" response, McCain sought to depict himself as a stern trust-buster in the mold of his political hero, Theodore Roosevelt.
The Republican's new stance as angry populist carries risk but also a potential bounty of political capital.
"Mismanagement and greed became the operating standard while regulators were asleep at the switch," he said.
Obama, who had been aggressive earlier in the week in depicting McCain as "out of touch" for saying that the economy's fundamentals were "sound" while the markets reeled, took a more measured route.
In Espanola, N.M., the Democrat called for legislation that would bolster "liquidity to enable our financial markets to function."
But while he continued his assault on McCain for a "reverse course" toward economic populism, Obama did not detail how his own plan would work.
McCain started the day off pugnacious, saying in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that if he were president, he would fire SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, a former GOP congressman from Newport Beach.
Cox, an appointee of President Bush, dismissed McCain's comment, saying that "it is precisely the wrong moment for a change in leadership that inevitably would disrupt the work of the SEC at just the wrong time."
Obama mocked McCain's call to fire Cox by suggesting that voters "fire the whole trickle-down, on-your-own, look-the-other-way crowd in Washington."
The president appoints the SEC chairman but cannot fire him.
Anticipating ridicule from the Obama camp, McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers said the president "always reserves the right to request the resignation of an appointee and to maintain the customary expectation that it will be delivered."
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino later said that Bush still supported Cox.
The chasm between the two GOP leaders over Cox's future bolstered McCain's continuing effort to distance himself from Bush.
