OXFORD, Miss. - In a momentous first meeting, the two presidential candidates sparred intensely and at times heatedly last night over the financial crisis consuming Wall Street and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The first of three televised presidential debates at the University of Mississippi came at the end of an already dramatic week in Washington and on Wall Street, as the administration, congressional leaders and the two candidates wrestled over a bailout package for the financial industry. Until yesterday morning, it was not clear that the debate would take place.
John McCain and Barack Obama looked sober, serious and intent on leveling their most cutting criticisms of the other's record. The rapid-fire clashes covered a broad terrain from spending earmarks, tax-cut proposals and federal spending to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries.
Obama, 47, repeatedly invoked President Bush's name, tying him and his policies to McCain on tax cuts, spending and particularly Iraq. McCain, on the other hand, painted Obama as too green to understand much of what he is talking about.
In one of the toughest jabs, Obama sharply questioned McCain's temperament, telling him he didn't exercise prudent judgment when he once "sung songs" about bombing Iran and called for extinction of North Korea. McCain, however, didn't take the bait. Instead, he used the opportunity to recite his lengthy foreign policy record.
McCain, 72, at times lectured Obama like the junior senator that he is, telling him he didn't know the difference between military tactics and strategy, didn't understand that Pakistan was a failed state before President Pervez Musharraf came to power, and displayed "a little bit of naivete" when it came to assessing Russia's aggression against Georgia.
"I honestly don't believe that Senator Obama has the knowledge or experience and has made the wrong judgments in a number of areas," McCain said. "We've seen this stubbornness before in this administration to cling to a belief that somehow the surge has not succeeded, and failing to acknowledge that he was wrong about the surge is - shows to me ... that we need more flexibility in a president of the United States than that."
But Obama questioned McCain's judgment time and again.
"John, you like to pretend like the war started in 2007. You talk about the surge. The war started in 2003, and at the time when the war started, you said it was going to be quick and easy," Obama said. "You said we knew where the weapons of mass destruction were. You were wrong.
