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EAMON JAVERS
Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson declined to say whom he voted for in the 2008 presidential election during an interview Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"Who I voted for is between me and the voting booth," Paulson said.
But he reiterated a point made in his new book "On the Brink," which recounts the Bush appointee's struggles as the nation's economy tipped into crisis during 2007 and 2008. Paulson said he had been very impressed with Barack Obama as a candidate.
"I was very impressed," Paulson said of Obama's concern about the economic situation. "Candidate McCain, I will admit, gave me a few anxious days and hours," Paulson said.
In the book, Paulson writes that McCain's decision to suspend his presidential campaign and return to Washington to work out a bailout plan was "playing with dynamite," and that "it looked as if [he] had no plan at all."
But the former Treasury chief praised McCain's handling of the last days of his sinking campaign, when, he said, it would have been very easy for McCain to "demagogue" the TARP financial rescue package and other measures the government was taking to rescue the economy. That was a temptation McCain resisted, Paulson said.
Paulson, who appeared along with former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, also lamented the soaring national debt. "It is by far the most serious long term challenge we as a nation face," Paulson said. "It is a generational issue. There is no way we are going to deal effectively with the deficit without retooling the entitlement programs."
