The last of three presidential debates couldn't have taken place in a more dramatic context.
Since the first debate three weeks ago, Americans' concerns have turned into fears as the nation's economic situation has worsened. Yet the two candidates did little last night to express any urgency or to get beyond their long-held talking points.
Economists are saying that the slowdown will be long- lasting and that we haven't yet glimpsed the bottom. The debate itself took place on the day that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced that the U.S. government would use $250 billion of taxpayer funds to buy equity in financial firms, an attempt to halt the credit freeze threatening to bankrupt companies and eliminate jobs.
Yet the candidates were still talking about last week's rescue plans and old disputes about whose tax cuts are bigger and better.
What a disappointment. What an opportunity missed. As Americans watch their retirement accounts and kids' college savings accounts evaporate, few have little understanding of what's really happening. That's where both candidates failed them.
The American people are looking for reassurance that the next president can be flexible and think beyond orthodox approaches to deal with this historic upheaval. They found no such reassurance last night.
This lack of engagement on the crisis before us made the attacks on old associations look all the more petty and pathetic. Moderator Bob Schieffer put out the bait for candidates to take and McCain, in particular, bit hard.
The result was that much of the debate was devoted to attacks from McCain and responses by Obama on topics that included the '60s radical Bill Ayers, a speech by Rep. John Lewis and the activities of ACORN, a community organization that registers low- income voters.
In other circumstances, spending time on these subjects might have made sense, at least politically. On a day when the stock market plummeted yet again, they seemed simply irrelevant.
So as we come into the final days of the campaign, caution is the watchword for Obama and attack for McCain. The economic crisis? That, it seems, can wait until January.
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