Purdum on McCain: MSNBC 10/10/08

Todd Purdum and Andrea Mitchell on John McCain
"MSNBC Live" 1:46pm
Commentary

TRANSCRIPTION
ANDREA MITCHELL: [O]n a conference call just now campaign manager for John McCain, Rick Davis was asked why the candidates are not talking more about the economy and--quote--he answered, "I don't think that you want to turn a campaign into a CNBC news show." Close quote. [...]

TODD PURDUM: [I]t's hard to know what he meant by that except that he was trying to make light of something that's obviously a very serious situation. They know that they--it's hard for them to have anything constructive to say. They've shown that they run [...] from saying anything too specific about what they do.

[...]

PURDUM: [McCain] tossed [his mortgage buy-up plan] out with such vagueness that it seemed [...] it wasn't really a serious proposal.

MITCHELL: [P]eople are looking to leadership. [...] So people are looking to these candidates and they don't seem to be drawing much sustenance from that either.

[...]

MITCHELL: In fact the McCain campaign seems to be trying to challenge the competence and the character of Barack Obama in the face of this crisis and connect the Bill Ayers attack with economic concerns. I'm not sure--do you think they're doing it successfully? There seems to be sort of a split personality going on.

PURDUM: I think there's been a tremendous backlash from people who were once close to Senator McCain like John Weaver, his former chief adviser and the people like that are suggesting John Sidney McCain ought to put in a 911 call to Jiminy Cricket, that he's forgotten something about [...] how to run an honorable campaign.

[...]

MITCHELL: Right now we're watching the DOW. It is now down below 8,000. We're talking about a drop of 592 points as the market volatility continues [...].

[...]

PURDUM: [McCain] needs some kind of over-arching message that he would be the person with the policy, with the plan, with the economic answers to go forward here and he seems to struggle to have articulated something like that. He hasn't gotten there.

TP2 JM MSNBC 10-10-08 13.46 (JR#532)

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• McCain
• economy
• taxes
• McLobbyists
• tracking