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Fighting To Be Working Class Heroes

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The New York Times

Published: August 22, 2008

Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain ripped into each other on Thursday over how many houses, fireplaces and even wine cellars they own, using allusions to net worth to deride each other while portraying themselves as able helmsmen for a faltering economy.

With both candidates convinced that financially pinched voters might hold the electoral key in November - especially in such battleground states as Ohio and Pennsylvania - Obama and McCain were taking new, vivid steps to empathize with struggling middle-class and working-class Americans, a tricky task given their personal wealth.

In a new television advertisement and at an event in Virginia on Thursday, Obama seized upon new comments by McCain, made a day earlier, expressing uncertainty about the number of homes he owned. (Eight, with his wife, Obama aides said; four residences, McCain aides said.)

Obama advisers cast the McCain remark as politically explosive, contrasting it with the mortgage foreclosure crisis that has upended the American dream of owning even one home.

The McCain camp swiftly countered with its own advertisement and condemnations, noting that Obama owns a "mansion" with four fireplaces (and a wine cellar) in the Hyde Park section of Chicago, and reviving questions about the Democratic nominee's controversial land deal with Antoin Rezko, a businessman who was convicted in June on fraud and corruption charges.

The exchange highlighted how, as economic issues increasingly dominate the campaign, the two presumptive nominees are still searching for ways to connect with voters on the economy.

Obama sometimes seems professorial in response to personal problems, and McCain seemed more than half-serious Saturday when he defined "rich" as having $5 million or more - hardly a Joe Six-Pack sort of line.

Obama became a millionaire by writing books, and he lost important primaries this spring in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana to a rival who appealed to voters with a can-do political platform on pocketbook issues, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

McCain, meanwhile, overcame a primary challenge from former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, a wealthy business executive who also focused on the economy.

"Neither Obama nor McCain owns the economy as an issue, because they've never focused on it, really, in ways that working-class families would identify with," said Jimmy Siegel, who helped create political advertisements for Clinton's presidential campaign.

"Obama has always been about hope and change, in a broad sense, while McCain has always been about foreign policy and experience."

Perhaps taking his cue from the Clinton campaign's successes, Obama is encouraging voters to start to share their stories of personal hardship with him. He also is taking more opportunities to emphasize his own understanding of hardship with them, although it doesn't always come easy.

McCain, meanwhile, has focused on offshore oil drilling and broad tax relief as steps to directly assist the greatest number of working Americans, by lowering taxes and, his campaign hopes, both gas prices and home foreclosures.

McCAIN'S ASSETS

A rundown of Cindy and John McCain's wealth:

8 HOMES: A ranch and two condos in Arizona; three condos in Coronado, Calif.; a condo in La Jolla, Calif.; and another in Arlington, Va.

BEER EARNINGS: Cindy McCain's stake in Hensley & Co., an Anheuser-Busch distributor in Phoenix, is worth $250 million.

INCOME: With his book royalties and radio-appearance fees donated to charity, McCain's Senate salary of $169,300 and Navy pension of about $56,000 are his only significant sources of income.

The Associated Press

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