Ok, You Two, What Would You Do to Solve This Mess?

McCain's wide-net approach to the financial crisis may reflect the lack of a dominant voice on his team since he parted with his closest adviser, Phil Gramm. The former Texas senator, a champion of financial deregulation, left the campaign during the summer after he decried Americans as a "nation of whiners," embarrassing McCain. But McCain has relied on no one as much since. "Everything that John learned before the campaign about economics he learned from Phil Gramm," says a former longtime McCain adviser who would talk about the candidate's positions only on condition of anonymity. "Senator McCain seeks advice from a broad and diverse group of people," says a senior McCain adviser, who requested anonymity in disputing about these characterizations.

Despite his experience chairing the Senate commerce committee, McCain has never had a particularly comfortable relationship with Wall Street, says a Republican fund-raiser who works in the financial industry and asked for anonymity in discussing politics. At one Wall Street fund-raiser, the candidate seemed so stilted and awkward in talking about finance it was like he was "going to visit the dentist," says the GOP fund-raiser. The senior McCain adviser tells NEWSWEEK that the senator "has been in Congress for over two decades and he is obviously well versed on issues relating to the American economy. His wife also owns a successful business, so he has that perspective as well." The adviser adds: "Obama is fond of pointing out the presence of Rubin and Summers on his team, but … their sole contribution to the debate was to wait and see what the administration came up with."

For Obama's part, his aides say that his adoption of the core Clinton economics team doesn't mean a return to Clintonomics. Officials who led the former president's deficit-cutting efforts in 1993 say this is a different environment: Summers, for one, has publicly counseled deficit spending to get the economy healthy again. And as the crisis has spiraled further out of control, Obama has been forced to step up and offer more specifics. He has also made a personal visit to see Bernanke (McCain has not, though he has talked to him on the phone). Recently Obama proposed a "stability fee" that Wall Street's bailed-out firms should pay back to the government and a plan to help small businesses by extending a tax credit. Like McCain, says one of the Obama aides, Obama knows that if he's elected he's "going to have to hit the ground running on Jan. 20." Ground that, it seems, is ever shifting.

With Mark Hosenball and Suzanne Smalley

© 2008