McCain calls for heads to roll but fails to improve his poll ratings

REPUBLICAN presidential candidate John McCain, facing falling popularity, has demanded the sacking of the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after this week's banking meltdown.

Accusing Christopher Cox of having betrayed the public trust, he said: "If I were president today I would fire him."

But the Wall Street Journal yesterday blasted his attack on the SEC chairman as "unpresidential", saying the assault on Mr Cox was both false and deeply unfair.

The broadside came as polls show his Democrat rival, Barack Obama, edging ahead in key swing states amid public anxiety over the banking crisis.

These polls show Mr McCain has been only partly successful in distancing himself from the Republican Bush administration and from his own former support for the deregulation of Wall Street that many blame for the crisis.

Mr McCain, who in the primaries admitted he did not have the strongest grasp of economic issues, proposed stricter regulation of Wall Street and promised if elected to end "reckless behaviour".

He outlined a package of proposals, yesterday calling for the creation of a new agency, the Mortgage and Financial Institutions Trust, to safeguard the homes and life savings of all Americans.

However, these are difficult times for the Arizona senator. While he scores higher than Mr Obama on matters of national security, Americans prefer his Democrat rival on economic matters, now issue number one in most voters' minds.

Adding to his troubles, some of the shine has come off his running mate, Sarah Palin.

Her husband, Todd, refused to obey a subpoena to attend hearings yesterday over the so-called "Troopergate" controversy, in which Ms Palin, the Alaska governor, is alleged to have sacked a security chief over his failure to fire state trooper Mike Wooton, her former brother-in-law.

Polls show Mrs Palin is still more loved than loathed, but her favourability rating in a New York Times/CBS poll fell four points to 40 while her unfavourability rating jumped eight points to 30 with some voters unimpressed with her shaky grasp of foreign policy. In a bid to overcome this perceived shortcoming, Mr McCain is taking her to the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week.

While Mr McCain continues to run neck-and-neck with Mr Obama in most national polls, Mr Obama holds a slight lead in the key states of Ohio and Pennsylvania and is only a few points behind in the traditional Republican strongholds of Indiana and Virginia.

Several organisations including the Washington Post and CNN are also complaining of misleading McCain campaign advertisements, including one that falsely claimed Mr Obama voted for sex education classes for nursery school children.

Yesterday Mr Obama met a number of economic officials in Miami, most of them from Bill Clinton's administration in the 1990s. He held back from offering his own plan to change Wall Street's practices but said he supported efforts by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve to work out a financial rescue package.

BACKGROUND

THE "Troopergate" investigation is looking at whether the Republican Party's vice-presidential nominee abused her power as governor of Alaska.

Sarah Palin initially welcomed the investigation of accusations that she sacked Walt Monegan, the state's public safety commissioner, because he refused to fire state trooper Mike Wooten, who had divorced her sister.

"Hold me accountable," she said, maintaining she fired Monegan over budget disagreements. But she has increasingly opposed the investigation since becoming John McCain's running mate.

It is claimed unco-operative witnesses, such as her husband, Todd, are sidetracking the inquiry until after US election on 4 November.