A round-up of this morning's must-read stories. (FYI: I'm on the road right now, so I'll be getting a slightly later start on posting than usual. Thanks for reading, Andrew)

POLICIES SOUND THE SAME, BUT GOALS ARE DIFFERENT
(John Harwood, New York Times)
The economic crisis has snapped voters’ attention back to the alternative visions of Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, which sometimes sound the same, but are not... The staunch free-market philosophy shared by leading Republicans has lost its luster, leaving Americans jittery about their savings and both parties racing to bail out Wall Street. In characteristic Democratic fashion, Mr. Obama would temper free-market zeal with more government regulation, a redistribution of the tax burden to benefit middle- and working-class families at the expense of the affluent, and increased federal spending on health care, education, energy and infrastructure. He offers a change in ideology. By contrast, Mr. McCain seeks to tap voters’ anger at the way Washington works or doesn’t work, with its partisan rancor, nonstop money chase and failure to tackle national problems... Mr. McCain has displayed a rare talent and inclination for bucking partisan orthodoxy in search of solutions, most conspicuously in his successful push for campaign finance reform and his unsuccessful push for comprehensive new immigration legislation. The reform he offers points largely toward the process of governing and the possibility of bipartisan breakthroughs on such intractable issues as immigration, climate change and potential insolvency of Medicare and Social Security.

SURVEY: RACIAL ATTITUDES COST OBAMA
(Ron Fournier, Associated Press) Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Sen. Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an Associated Press -Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks - many calling them "lazy," "violent" or responsible for their own troubles. The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Mr. Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 - about 2.5 percentage points. A model derived from the poll results suggested that these problems could cost Mr. Obama up to six percentage points of support. The findings suggest that Mr. Obama's problem is close to home - among his fellow Democrats, particularly non-Hispanic white voters. Just seven in 10 people who call themselves Democrats support Mr. Obama, compared to the 85 percent of self-identified Republicans who back Mr. McCain.

THE RACE DISCUSSION OBAMA DIDN'T WANT
(Ben Smith, Politico) The national conversation appears to have arrived. Racial considerations that have long been palpable in southern Ohio and other crucial regions are again in the foreground. A new poll that accompanied a much buzzed-about Associated Press article on Saturday appears to starkly quantify the cost of racism to Obama: 6 percentage points in the polls. And Friday's debate will bring the campaign to the Deep South and offer the symbolism of an integrated debate at Ole Miss, the scene of a brutal battle over integration a generation ago. That conversation creates a moment with risks for both candidates — though perhaps greater risks for Obama. Many Democrats see the explicit discussion of race and politics as almost unambiguously negative for Obama, a reminder to voters of fraught questions of identity and a distraction from the economic troubles that have dominated the headlines in recent days and could bury Obama's rival, Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee.

NO TIME FOR POLITICS OF THE PLAYGROUND
(Clive Crook, Financial Times)
What about rallying round in a crisis? Before the situation worsened last week, both campaigns had already taken on a stridently negative tone. The financial emergency only reinforced this, giving no impetus whatever to the pragmatic, post-partisan consensus-seeking that both men once espoused and that the situation so urgently demands. They left that to Congress. For Mr Obama, what has happened is not so much a result of specific regulatory failures (of which there have been plenty) but a wholesale failure of the enemy ideology... Mr McCain, likewise playing to stereotype, sounded loud populist notes about greed on Wall Street and (again) the need for change in Washington. Both men continue to accuse the other of lies, distortions and gratuitous insults. This now constitutes the bulk of each campaign’s television advertising. Welcome to the new politics. Given the timing, Mr Obama and Mr McCain were bound to seem irrelevant to the task of stabilising the financial system, even though important principles are at stake in that effort. But whichever of them wins in November, the fallout from this emergency will probably cloud the next administration’s first two years in office. It would be good to see some dawning of this reality in remaining weeks before the election.

STAND-INS, NAPS HELP DEBATE PREPARATION
(Monica Langley, Wall Street Journal)
To get in the debating mood, Republican John McCain will host a town-hall event and take a short nap. His rival, Democrat Barack Obama, will work out or shoot hoops. And to prepare, Sen. McCain will spar this week in mock debates with Michael Steele. Mr. Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland and a prominent black Republican, will play Sen. Obama and use many of his speaking patterns, tactics and body language. Sen. Obama will practice with Greg Craig, a Washington lawyer and former official in the Clinton administration who is one of his few gray-haired advisers. After weeks of TV attack ads and prepared remarks on the stump, the candidates will face off on stage without teleprompters or advisers. With the presidential race in a near dead heat, neither candidate can afford a costly gaffe that sends his campaign into a tailspin... Each campaign is seeking even the smallest advantage. Obama advisers, for example, are considering how to provoke Sen. McCain into anger or showing what they say is how out of touch, or old, he is. Advisers have told Sen. McCain to watch out when Sen. Obama uses the phrase, "As I've said before..." One McCain adviser said it is used "when Obama actually changes his position, to pretend it's what he's always said."

THE CANDIDATES' DEBATE TASKS
(David Broder, Washington Post)  Looking back at the performance of the two men during their primary debates, the proposition that they are evenly matched looks quite plausible. McCain began his revival last year with a strong performance in a Republican debate in New Hampshire. Throughout the spring, he was usually at least the second-best man on the stage, outdone by the folksy and humorous Mike Huckabee but clearly more comfortable and assertive than Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani and the others. Except for Romney, McCain was rarely directly challenged in the way that Obama will test him; the other Republicans paid tribute to his character and treated him with kid gloves. So his struggles to maintain his composure and avoid personal attacks on Romney suggest a potential vulnerability in the Arizona senator. When Obama bluntly questions McCain's positions, the Arizona senator may have difficulty staying cool. On the other hand, Obama did not win the Democratic nomination by dominating the debates. In the early ones, when the stage was full, he lacked the verbal or physical tools to stand out from the crowd. More often than not, it was Hillary Clinton or John Edwards who made the strongest impression on the cameras and the audience. And when Clinton and Obama met one-on-one, she won most of the confrontations and the subsequent primaries.

CANDIDATES SEEK CHANGES IN WALL STREET RESCUE PLAN
(Robert Barnes and Dan Balz, Washington Post)
Both presidential candidates called Sunday for speedy, bipartisan consideration of the Bush administration's $700 billion economic rescue proposal. But Republican John McCain complained that the plan gives too much power to the Treasury secretary, and Democrat Barack Obama cautioned that any final deal must offer protection to taxpayers and homeowners as well as to Wall Street. McCain is concerned that the White House plan does not contain enough oversight of Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., or of his eventual successor. Even so, McCain did not say he would oppose it. Obama, campaigning in Charlotte, said, "As of now, the Bush administration has only offered a concept with a staggering price tag, not a plan." He added that "in return for their support, the American people must be assured that the deal reflects the basic principles of transparency and fairness and reform." Obama said a combination of greed and unfettered free markets had brought the country to "a perilous moment . . . a financial crisis as profound as any we've seen since the Great Depression." Both men offered a set of principles -- strikingly similar -- that the final agreement should contain. 

EARLY VOTING STARTS TODAY IN SOME STATES
(Richard Wolf, USA Today)
Voters by the thousands will begin casting ballots for president this week in an early voting process that's expected to set records this year. Residents of Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia are among the first in the nation eligible to vote in person, as well as by mail. During the next few weeks, at least 34 states and the District of Columbia will allow early in-person voting for Nov. 4 elections. Experts such as Paul Gronke of the Early Voting Information Center predict nearly a third of the electorate will vote early this year, up from 15% in 2000 and 20% in 2004. In closely contested Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, about half the voters are expected to cast ballots before Election Day. Florida could be 40%. It's all part of the most extensive early voting process in history. The campaigns of Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are already focused on getting voters to the polls, even as their general election contest is taking shape — and before any of the debates.

MCCAIN STILL SEEKING FIRM FOOTING ON FINANCIAL CRISIS
(Ben Smith, Politico) As McCain tries to regain his grip on the campaign narrative, and Obama adopts a more reserved posture his campaign hopes appears “presidential,” both men are struggling with their sheer irrelevance to the fast-moving wrangle between the White House, Congress, and the turbulent stock markets. The two candidates’ stances, though, reveal the degree to which this appears to offer Obama – who has regained his narrow lead in most national polls – a chance to pull away. McCain has scheduled a series of attention-getting gestures: He has scheduled a round of meetings for his running mate, Sarah Palin, with foreign leaders at the United Nations. He’ll share a stage with Bill Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York. And he’s turning to a time-tested method of changing the storyline for a beleaguered presidential candidate: He plans to appear Wednesday on the Late Show with David Letterman. As McCain has struggled to find his balance, Obama has been a steady, relatively low-key presence on the economic crisis.

STEERING THE MCCAIN CAMPAIGN, A LOT OF OLD BUSH HANDS
(Anne E. Kornblut and Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post)
Virtually every member of the team shared a common credential: years of service to President Bush. From Mark Wallace, a Bush appointee to the United Nations, to Tucker Eskew, who ran strategic communications for the Bush White House, to Greg Jenkins, who served as the deputy assistant to Bush in his first term and was executive director of the 2004 inauguration, Palin was surrounded on the trip home by operatives deeply rooted in the Bush administration. The clutch of Bush veterans helping to coach Palin reflects a larger reality about Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign: Far from being a group of outsiders to the Republican Party power structure, it is now run largely by skilled operatives who learned their crafts in successive Bush campaigns and various jobs across the Bush government over the past eight years... Republicans have been heartened by the effectiveness of the new McCain organization, which has helped put McCain back in serious contention for the White House, causing restlessness among Democrats who believed the race was Sen. Barack Obama's to lose.