US Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain hammered away at unruffled front-runner, Democratic Senator Barack Obama, in Tuesday’s second presidential debate but failed to land the cutting blow likely to revive his sliding poll numbers.
The under-pressure McCain came armed with an ambitious US$300 billion surprise plan to buy up the bad US mortgages that helped tip the global economy into crisis.
The Obama camp later claimed the proposal was part of the rescue plan signed into law late last week and that “it was Obama, not McCain, who called for this move two weeks ago.”
The initiative, an apparent bid by McCain to twist Obama’s advantage on the economy in his favoar, made few ripples during a sometimes muted debate that got most heated in clashes on the financial crisis, Pakistan and Iraq.
McCain was under intense pressure to throw his sliding campaign a lifeline, as he trails Obama by widening margins in national polls and in battleground states with time running out before the Nov. 4 election.
Snap polls by US television networks awarded the debate, the second of a trio of presidential clashes, to Obama, who seemed as comfortable as his rival in the “town hall” format that McCain loves.
After days of nasty campaign trail rhetoric, the two senators strolled onto the stage in Nashville, Tennessee, smiling broadly, and shook hands, but tension soon bubbled to the surface.
McCain, criticized for rarely looking at Obama during their first debate two weeks ago, let his dislike of his opponent show again, when he referred to him as “that one” in a tense exchange over energy.
Obama repeatedly made a show of “correcting” McCain’s interpretation of his record and proposals, and hit his top talking point of tying the Republican to the unpopular economic legacy of President George W. Bush.
A CNN national poll after the debate found that 54 percent of those asked thought Obama won and 30 percent said McCain was victorious.
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