The economy, and especially its impact on the middle class, has emerged as the focus of the presidential campaign, given skyrocketing fuel prices, high job losses and rising food costs. It is a tough issue for Republicans, with Bush’s approval ratings at low levels after two terms in office.

McCain and Obama were due to speak separately Tuesday at the League of United Latin American Citizens’ national convention, as each woos Hispanic voters, a demographic that traditionally skews to the Democrats but that was important to Bush’s election as a Texas governor and to his two presidential campaigns.

Both candidates were launching weeklong efforts to highlight their differences on the economy.

Obama said that McCain offers a third term of Bush’s policies.

“John McCain’s policies are essentially a repeat, a regurgitation of what we’ve been hearing from the Republican Party over the last two decades, maybe three,” Obama said Monday in St. Louis, where his plane made an unscheduled stop because of mechanical problems that forced him to cancel an appearance in Charlotte, North Carolina. “It’s part of the reason that we’re in the situation that we find ourselves in right now.”

McCain has been forced into a more defensive crouch because his party has held the White House while jobs, home values, stock prices and consumer confidence have tumbled.

While calling Obama’s plans expensive and unwise on Monday, he tried to distance himself from Bush, his fellow Republican, where he could.

“This Congress and this administration have failed to meet their responsibilities to manage the government,” McCain said in Denver. “Government has grown by 60 percent in the last eight years. That is simply inexcusable.”

He promised to veto “every single bill with wasteful spending.”

McCain has said the economy is not his strong suit, and on Monday he seemed eager to show a deeper understanding of the topic, even as he dismissed experts.

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