BALTIMORE — Gearing up for their first presidential debate, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama traded fresh jabs Sunday but offered no new policy prescriptions to lead the nation out of its economic morass.
In his only public appearance, McCain devoted just three sentences to the unfolding Wall Street debacle. He instead slammed Obama’s positions on Iraq and portrayed him as a weak leader overall.
McCain thus previewed part of the strategy he probably will employ when the candidates face off Friday to discuss foreign policy in Oxford, Miss., in the first of three scheduled debates.
Speaking in Charlotte, N.C., Obama focused almost entirely on the financial crisis and charged that McCain has embraced a failed economic philosophy for his 26 years in Congress.
