Palin: 'I Love Small Town USA'

RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:

Both the presidential candidates had rather quite days yesterday. Republican John McCain huddled with his economic advisers and prepared for Wednesday's final debate. Democrat Barack Obama took a break from his debate preparations to go door-to-door with volunteers in Ohio. The vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, was also in Ohio yesterday. She told a crowd in St. Clairsville that John McCain would bring reform.

SARAH PALIN: John McCain understands our nation's problems and he knows how to fix them. As a senator, John has confronted the corrupt ways of Washington. He's taken this on. He's taken on the wasteful spending and abuses of power. As president, he's going to end those abuses whatever it takes.

MONTAGNE: The Republican ticket has leveled increasingly harsh attacks against Senator Obama in recent days. But Sarah Palin struck a different tone yesterday. She spoke of her love for small town America and told the crowd about the need to hold federal spending in check.

PALIN: We're in a hole. What do you do if you're in a hole? You don't want to be in that hole. The first thing you do is you quit digging. We got to quit digging this hole that we have dug and this is how we have to do this. We have to impose a spending freeze to cover all but the most vital functions of government like worker retraining. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.