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WASHINGTON: After basking in the adulation of foreign crowds, White House contender Barack Obama was back on home soil on Sunday with a new offensive to address US voters' overriding anxiety - the economy.
Switching gears back to the central front of his campaign against Republican John McCain, the Democrat readied to convene a glittering panel of economic advisers at a time of sky-high fuel prices and job insecurity.
"I do think that in terms of me governing, being an effective president, that that trip was helpful," he told a conference of ethnic-minority journalists in Chicago, hours after flying back from London.
But the Illinois senator stressed: "I don't know the political effect of this when I come back. You know, I think people are worried about gas prices, they're worried about job security.
"They're worried about their retirement fund as the stock market goes down. So probably a week of me focusing on international issues doesn't necessarily translate into higher poll numbers here in the United States.
"Because people are understandably concerned about the immediate effects of the economy. And that's what we will be talking about for the duration."
In contrast to McCain's market-driven approach, Obama laid out interventionist proposals for middle-class tax cuts, new federal stimulus spending and additional measures to prop up the stricken housing market.
McCain, while castigating Obama anew for his failure to visit wounded US troops in Germany, said Wall Street was the "villain" when it came to out-of-control mortgage lending to borrowers of dubious means.
The Senate on Saturday approved a housing rescue plan designed to help thousands of homeowners avert foreclosure and bolster mortgage finance giants at risk of collapse.
But the Arizona senator, speaking on ABC News, also said Congress was "at fault" for allowing government spending to get out of hand and push the US deficit up.
"So I think there's a lot of blame to go around here," said McCain, who has struggled to conceal his frustration at the glowing press coverage accorded to Obama's tour of Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East and Europe.
The trip was aimed at cementing the Democrat's credentials to serve as commander-in-chief, an area where he still lags the vastly experienced McCain. But on the economy, Obama has a commanding poll lead.
He was to meet on Monday with his high-powered economic panel, which includes former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, ex-Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, billionaire investor Warren Buffett and Google chairman Eric Schmidt.
McCain meanwhile suffered a setback just over a week ago with the resignation of his own top economic adviser, Phil Gramm, after the former senator had called the United States a "nation of whiners" over the economy.
A new Gallup poll on Saturday suggested Obama had stabilised his national lead, after McCain appeared to be chipping away at it earlier in the week. Obama led by 48 to 41 percent in the poll conducted between July 23 and 25, while he was abroad.
In a Rasmussen poll, Obama was up 49 percent to 43 percent on McCain. Last week, the rivals were tied at 46 percent.
Obama sailed through the biggest tests of his trip, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel, and captured an unprecedented photo-op for a presidential candidate, speaking before a staggering crowd of 200,000 people in Berlin.
Republicans however branded his tour, also including Kuwait, France and Jordan, as a shallow political stunt.
And McCain's team berated Obama's failure to visit wounded troops from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars at the Landstuhl US military hospital in Germany on Friday - probably the only real hiccup of the trip.
McCain, who is running a new ad accusing Obama of going to the gym in preference to visiting the troops, told ABC he would have staged a "seismic" protest if anyone had tried to bar him from the visit.
The Republican insisted Obama was under no Pentagon orders against meeting the veterans, provided he shed his press corps and campaign aides. Obama, however, says he did not want the troops used as a political prop. - AFP/de
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