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9/18/08

IHT:US Elections - Economy plays havoc with McCain candidacy - After all he voted 90% of time for Bush's disastrous proposals

For the complete report from the International Herald Tribune click on this link

US Elections - Economy plays havoc with McCain candidacy - After all he voted 90% of time for Bush's disastrous proposals

The American economic free fall has played havoc with Republican John McCain's presidential campaign, as he tries to distance himself from the unpopular Bush administration and walk away from his own history as a champion of government deregulation. McCain found himself in a particularly difficult spot Wednesday as the bellwether Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 450 points — slightly more than 4 percent and the second huge loss this week — after an $85 billion government bailout of one of the world's largest insurance companies, American International Group Inc. McCain had vigorously opposed the measure just hours before it was announced.

McCain said during the primary campaign — and likely to his everlasting regret — that he was not as well versed on economic issues as he would like. Compounding that, the 72-year-old former Vietnam prisoner of war has been closely tied to President George W. Bush, whose popularity is at near record lows and most likely falling further under the weight of the economic slide this week — a meltdown not seen going back nearly 80 years. Obama, who appears to have regained his focus in the White House contest, was hitting McCain hard as a product of a Republican drive over recent decades to deregulate the financial markets, moves that the first-term Illinois senator blamed for the mounting damage to the U.S. economy.

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