On Economy, Obama Offers Ideas, McCain Blames Rival

--that's the headline in today's Washington Post:

"As officials in Washington raced to put together a bailout plan for the nation's teetering financial system, Sen. John McCain hammered Sen. Barack Obama as part of the problem while Obama said any rescue should include a new stimulus package for working families. "

McCain, who has supported the Bush push for the deregulation that led to this crisis, whose main economic advisor was the architect of the deregulation that is most directly responsible for the banking crisis, and whose campaign manager and many other advisors were big time lobbyists deeply involved in gaming the system, attacked Obama for ties to one person (Franklin Raines) who was never an Obama advisor at all. In a separate story, the Post called this assertion "particularly dubious." Yet the McCain campaign cites the Post as their source.

McCain also attacked a former Fannie Mae exec who was briefly on Obama's vp selection committee, saying that Jim Johnson had been paid with "your money." But the Post points out:"the severance packages were paid by company shareholders, not taxpayers."

On the plan to save the economy currently being devised by members of the administration and Congress, the Post story quotes Obama yesterday: "We'd better do it in an intelligent, systematic, thoughtful fashion. I'm much less interested at this point in scoring political points than I am in making sure that we have a structure in place that is sound and is actually going to work."