McCain and Obama call for bipartisanship, then point fingers

COLUMBUS, Ohio —

John McCain, calling himself a man of action like his hero, Teddy Roosevelt, told a raucous crowd here Monday that he had helped lead the charge to pass the Wall Street rescue plan. "I've never been afraid of stepping in to solve problems for the American people," McCain said to cheers and applause.

Two hours later, the bailout plan that McCain had boasted of working for went down to defeat in the House, with McCain's fellow Republicans siding soundly against it.

As the stock market plummeted on the news, McCain was forced to make a second and far more sober statement defending his work on the rescue plan.

"I worked hard to play a constructive role in bringing everyone to the table," he said to reporters gathered at his next campaign stop, in Iowa. He said he had helped shape the bill to lessen the risk to taxpayers.

The failure of the rescue plan in the House, and the stock-market losses that followed, presented a challenge to both major presidential candidates, who cautiously had supported the plan and had attended a high-profile meeting with President Bush last week designed to advance a deal on the legislation.

After the plan failed Monday, each candidate urged Congress to try again and called for a renewed spirit of bipartisanship — even while the two campaigns traded blame and barbs.

Although Barack Obama, who was campaigning in the suburbs of Denver, said no one person was at fault in the financial crisis and that there was a "lot of blame to spread around," he urged voters to consider McCain's record of favoring deregulation of the nation's financial markets as they weighed which candidate would best steer the nation's economic "ship into port."

McCain called for bipartisanship, yet he criticized his Democratic rival.

"Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process," McCain said, referring to the failed House vote. "Now is not the time to fix the blame; it's time to fix the problem."

McCain's campaign went further, with senior policy adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin placing the blame for the bailout's failure squarely on the Democratic presidential candidate and his party.

"This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country," he said.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton characterized the statements as "angry and hyperpartisan" and said they were "exactly why the American people are disgusted with Washington."

Aides in both camps said the candidates immediately called Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and others, but neither McCain nor Obama announced plans to return to Washington. The House adjourned for the Jewish holy days and is not scheduled to return to session until Thursday.

Obama and McCain had maneuvered to be able to claim some credit for passage of a financial rescue plan.

During last week's negotiations, Obama and many other congressional Democrats called for several changes to the bailout plan, which the Bush administration had unveiled days earlier. They included efforts to prevent further home foreclosures, greater oversight of the plan and limits on severance packages for executives leaving companies helped by the plan.

McCain's involvement was more direct, complicated and difficult to assess. After temporarily suspending his campaign last week, and just before attending the White House meeting, he met with House Republicans in the Capitol. He heard loud complaints about the bailout proposal's costs, structure and details.

When the White House session took place, McCain surprised several at the table by having little to say other than that the House Republicans' unhappiness needed attention.

As recently as Monday morning, only minutes before the House's stunning vote, McCain suggested that his call for a White House summit meeting Thursday, and his visit with unhappy House Republicans that preceded it, had helped clear the way for the bill's passage.

"I went to Washington last week to make sure that the taxpayers of Ohio and across this great country were not left footing the bill for mistakes made on Wall Street and in Washington," he told a crowd in Columbus. "Some people have criticized my decision, but I will never, ever be a president who sits on the sidelines when this country faces a crisis."

McCain's efforts, however, were aimed squarely at House Republicans, the group mainly responsible for the bill's demise. If Congress' impasse leads to a credit crisis, "it's not going to be good for McCain," said veteran Republican consultant John Feehery.

Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, said McCain would feel the fallout over the House's rejection of the measure far more than Obama.

"There's nothing worse than prematurely claiming victory and then finding you've been handed a defeat," Baker said. "It's a sign of the impulsiveness that he's often been accused of."

On NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, top adviser Steve Schmidt said McCain managed "to help bring all of the parties to the table, including the House Republicans, whose votes were needed to pass this."

The comment suggested that McCain took responsibility for rounding up the needed GOP votes, "and that was probably a stupid thing for him to promise to do," said Democratic adviser Jennifer Palmieri.

Information from The Washington Post

and The Associated Press is included in this report.