Mac's Market Approach Sours Amid Crisis

The tumbling stock market has drawn the wrong kind of attention to John McCain’s Social Security and health-care positions, the Wall Street Journal reports, since the Republican has long been an advocate of more market-based, deregulated approaches in both areas. A new Barack Obama ad says McCain’s plan for private accounts amounts to “risking Social Security on the stock market.”

McCain reaffirmed his belief in private Social Security yesterday, but only for young Americans, and only “in a voluntary fashion.” On health care, meanwhile, Obama seized on a recent McCain call for deregulation “as we have done over the last decade in banking.” McCain’s piece was vague on which regulations should go; his camp says he’s only advocating allowing the purchase of out-of-state insurance. (More McCain 2008 stories.)