The Old Boys Network - New Cable Channel

This is one thing that Barack Obama, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the other one, I forget his name, can all agree on, it's the Old Boys Network. Financial meltdown reshapes U.S. race Sep 20, 2008 04:30 AM Tim Harper Washington Bureau WASHINGTONThere is no gilt-edged economic accomplishment in Barack Obama's resumé that helped propel him through Democratic party ranks. Over 26 years in the U.S. Congress, Republican John McCain has been the maverick, the reformer, the national security bulldog, but nothing during those years readied him for the likes of this week's challenge. Yet today there is finally clarity in a muddled U.S. presidential election campaign one of these men will be elected Nov. 4 because voters trust him to restore American prosperity, return sanity to the chaos on Wall Street and allow the heartland in the United States of Anxiety to sleep without worrying that their retirement funds are evaporating and their home is about to be lost. There is really no other issue. These two men with their thin economic backgrounds had to grapple this week with America's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The decisions made by a President McCain or a President Obama will cascade well beyond Wall Street and Main Street, driving much of the economic future of Canada and the world. If history is a reliable guide, those decisions will be made by Obama. This is not the terrain on which McCain wanted to fight this election. Traditionally, incumbent parties pay for economic distress at the ballot box, and only once since World War II have American voters given one party three consecutive terms in the White House. That political truism is being driven home in 2008, with George W. Bush facing historically low popularity ratings before this latest financial meltdown, and McCain cannot shake a candid comment he once uttered on the campaign trail, admitting the economy was not his strong suit. The crisis also drags Bush, McCain's biggest liability, back into the spotlight and ends his Sarah Palin-driven bounce in popularity. Any week in which bankruptcies, bailouts and wild stock market fluctuations supplant talk of hockey moms and lipstick on pit bulls is a bad week on the trail for McCain. Yet history has not always been the barometer of choice in handicapping a race that has broken new ground on a number of fronts. A USA Today/Gallup Poll released yesterday indicated 29 per cent of registered voters said the financial crisis would make them more likely to vote for Obama, but 23 per cent said it would make them more likely to back McCain. Obama has a four-point national lead, but a series of battleground states destined to decide this race remain too close to call. While neither man was chosen to carry their party banner because of their economic expertise, they are also essentially on the sidelines looking in at a week in which global investors lost $3 trillion amidst what has been described as a once-in-a-century economic meltdown. They have had to cede ground to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke, who prepared the largest taxpayer bailout in American history a package that could be worth as much as $1 trillion during a week in which the venerable Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers collapsed, Merrill Lynch was unloaded in a fire sale and American International Group was bailed out by Washington for $85 billion. At week's end, stock markets rebounded, but uncertainty abounded. Obama endorsed the administration's plan yesterday. "This is a worldwide issue, and while the United States can and will lead in stabilizing the credit markets, we should ask other nations, who share in this crisis, to be part of the solution as well,'' Obama said in Miami.