For rivals, finance crisis poses on-the-fly tests

Mr. McCain has adopted an increasingly populist tone and blamed Wall Street greed. By Wednesday, on a trip through Michigan, Mr. McCain even suggested that he would favor loans to the auto industry, an idea he had once faulted. At a General Motors plant in Orion, he said, “We are not going to leave the workers here in Michigan hung out to dry while we give billions in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street.”

On Tuesday, Mr. McCain said he would oppose a federal bailout of the insurance giant American International Group, only to endorse it as unavoidable the next day when the Federal Reserve took over A.I.G. to prevent its losses from infecting other financial institutions. Also on Tuesday, Mr. McCain proposed a “9/11-style commission” to study the problem and recommend solutions for the long term, then switched Thursday to propose the creation of a government agency as soon as possible.

Mr. McCain’s call for a new trust to relieve troubled financial companies of their bad loans — much like the Resolution Trust Corporation, which was created after the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s — dramatizes how far he has backtracked from a career as a deregulator who opposed bigger government. He made his proposal hours before the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve disclosed that they were considering a similar approach.

Among those who have supported the creation of such an entity is Paul A. Volcker, a former Fed chairman. He is among a core group of Obama advisers on the financial crisis that includes Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers, the former treasury secretaries, and Laura Tyson, an economic adviser in the administration of President Bill Clinton, all of whom are expected to meet with Mr. Obama on Friday in Miami. Aides to Mr. Obama said that he was open to the concept but that the protection of taxpayers was a critical detail yet to be worked out.

Mr. Obama calls at each campaign stop for tighter regulation of Wall Street and help for those on Main Street. Although he usually speaks without notes, in recent days he has consistently used a teleprompter, to avoid errors that would undercut his attempts to sound presidential.

Between campaign appearances this week, he has received updates and briefings several times each day from Mr. Paulson, his economic advisers and Wall Street donors. Mr. Paulson also has briefed Mr. McCain and his chief economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

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In an example of the frenetic efforts by the Obama side to keep up, the candidate late Tuesday asked for a conference call with core advisers. Mr. Volcker answered his cellphone on a Manhattan street corner, Mr. Rubin called in minutes after landing in New York from London, and they joined others to discuss how Mr. Obama should react.

Michael Cooper contributed reporting.

This article, "For Rivals, Finance Crisis Is Posing on-the-Fly Tests," first appeared in the New York Times.

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