WASHINGTON — Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama expressed cautious support Sunday for the bailout of the nation’s financial institutions, though both reserved the right to change their minds after they have reviewed details of the deal.
McCain said on ABC’s “This Week” that he will “swallow hard and go forward” with the plan, adding that it is time to “get this deal off the table, let’s get this to the president.”
McCain, who rushed to Washington last week to help reach a deal, said that “the option of doing nothing is simply not an acceptable option.”
Obama called the need for a bailout “the culmination of a sorry period in our history, in which reckless speculation and greed on Wall Street and lax oversight from Washington led to a meltdown of our financial markets.”
Obama said that as president, he would order a review of the bailout plan. But he said a failure to approve it now would have “devastating consequences” for the U.S. economy.
“When taxpayers are asked to take such an extraordinary step because of the irresponsibility of a relative few, it is not a cause for celebration,” Obama said. “But this step is necessary.”
The campaigns continued to squabble over the candidates’ White House meeting last week and the negotiations over the bailout package.
McCain explained on ABC that he “came back because I didn’t want to phone it in. I won’t claim a bit of credit if that makes them feel better.”
But Democrats noted that McCain spent little time on Capitol Hill talking directly with lawmakers, instead preferring to work the phones from his Crystal City, Va., headquarters.
And an Obama spokesman sent out e-mails to reporters reminding them that although lawmakers and congressional staff members worked into Saturday night to hammer out the deal, McCain was at CityZen, one of Washington’s priciest restaurants.
Campaigning in Detroit, Obama continued to attack McCain, saying the Republican’s backing of deregulation laws helped cause the economic crisis.
“You can’t make up for 26 years in 26 days,” Obama said at a rally. “For most of the 26 years, he’s been against the common-sense rules and regulations that could have stopped this problem.”
Throughout Friday’s debate, McCain suggested that Obama didn’t “understand” a number of issues, a charge Obama tossed back Sunday.
“He kept on asking me, ‘You don’t understand.’ No, I understand — you want more of the same,” he said, referring to McCain’s embrace of some policies advocated by the Bush administration. “A fifth-grader could understand it’s more of the same.”
A McCain spokesman responded that Obama had “ignored his record of opposing middle-class tax relief.”
“Barack Obama voted 94 times in just three years for higher taxes,” Tucker Bounds said.
