McCain vows greatest comeback yet
Posted: 14 October 2008 0655 hrs

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WILMINGTON, North Carolina : Republican John McCain confessed on Monday his White House odds looked daunting as rival Barack Obama built a commanding poll lead, but insisted he was the experienced hand that a nation in crisis requires.

As the Democrat unveiled a four-point plan to get the stricken US economy back on its feet, new polls gave him a double-digit national lead three weeks before the November 4 election.

McCain, after a recent barrage of negative character attacks on Obama, retooled his stump speech as he battled to shore up support in Virginia and North Carolina - two states that are normally rock-solid Republican.

"We have 22 days to go. We're six points down. The national media has written us off," the Arizona senator said, accusing his rival from Illinois of "measuring the drapes" in the White House already.

"But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we've got them just where we want them," he insisted, having already come back once after his campaign for the Republican nomination looked dead and buried in mid-2007.

"The next president won't have time to get used to the office," said McCain, 72, in his latest swipe at the relative inexperience of his 47-year-old opponent.

"He won't have the luxury of studying up on the issues before he acts. He will have to act immediately. And to do that, he will need experience, courage, judgment and a bold plan of action to take this country in a new direction."

McCain also took one of his clearest shots yet at President George W. Bush, whose dismal approval ratings are weighing on Republican fortunes this year.

"We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: waiting for our luck to change," he said.

"I come from a long line of McCains who believed that to love America is to fight for her. I have fought for you most of my life. There are other ways to love this country, but I've never been the kind to do it from the sidelines."

McCain's revamped speech was meant to have been laced with concrete new ideas to address the crisis seeping beyond Wall Street into the economy at large, according to weekend indications from his camp.

In the event it was short on details and long on attacks portraying Obama as an old-style tax-and-spend liberal who would lead the economy to ruin.

But that line of offensive, and McCain's attacks on Obama's Chicago "cronies" such as 1960s radical William Ayers, appear to have flopped with voters.

The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll said Obama's favourable rating was up six points from last month to 64 percent while McCain's had fallen seven points to 52 percent. Overall, Obama led 53 percent to 43.

Heading into the final presidential debate Wednesday, the poll said about one-third of voters had a better opinion of Obama as a result of his performances in the first two debates. By contrast, more than a quarter said they thought worse of McCain after the debates.

Monday's Gallup tracking poll also had Obama with a hefty 10-point lead over McCain among registered voters - 51 percent to 41. Experts have said that historically, no presidential candidate has been able to come back from an October deficit this large in pre-election polls dating back to 1936.

Surveys by Marist meanwhile had Obama up by a yawning 12 points in Pennsylvania, 53 to 41 percent, and by four in Ohio - 49 percent to 45.

In Ohio, which decided the 2004 election in Bush's favour, Obama proposed a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures, a new lending facility for US states and cities, and penalty-free withdrawals from savers' retirement accounts.

"We need to pass an economic rescue plan for the middle-class and we need to do it now," the Democrat said in Toledo, also rolling out a 3,000 dollar tax credit for every job created by a company in the United States.

"We can't wait to help workers and families and communities who are struggling right now - who don't know if their job or their retirement will be there tomorrow; who don't know if next week's pay cheque will cover this month's bills," he said.

The Obama campaign said the latest iteration of his economic plan would cost 175 billion dollars over two years, but said it was fully paid for by higher taxes on top earners and by ending the Iraq war.

Economic adviser Jason Furman said Obama was sticking to his pledge of tax cuts for 95 percent of working families, and said "our biggest priority is to avoid a painful recession." - AFP/de