BIDEN ERRS: Vice presidential candidate Joe Biden says today’s leaders should take a lesson from the history books and follow fellow Democrat Franklin Roosevelt’s response to a financial crisis. “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened,'” Barack Obama’s running mate recently told the “CBS Evening News.” One problem: Republican Herbert Hoover was in office when the stock market crashed in October 1929. There also was no television at the time; TV wasn’t introduced to the public until the 1939 World’s Fair.
CLINTON’S PREDICTION: Sen. Hillary Clinton said Tuesday she has “no doubt” that Barack Obama will be the next president. Interviewed on CBS’ “The Early Show,” she was asked what she thought about Republican Sarah Palin’s vice presidential candidacy. She said she thought any woman is going to face certain questions but that “the bottom line is who is on top of the ticket.”
POLL SHIFT: Turmoil in the financial industry and growing pessimism about the economy have altered the shape of the presidential race, giving Democrat Barack Obama the first clear lead of the general election campaign over Republican John McCain, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News national poll. The poll found that, among likely voters, Obama leads McCain by 52 percent to 43 percent. Two weeks ago, after the Republican National Convention, the race was essentially even, with McCain at 49 percent and Obama at 47 percent.
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IN THE WEB EDITION
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