ST. LOUIS - It may be a cliche from an earlier presidential run involving a Clinton, but it appears to be true once again. More and more, the race for the White House is about "the economy, stupid."

After months of talk about war and health care and "change in Washington," the presidential campaign has, in recent weeks, turned its focus to matters of the pocketbook.

Between a sliding stock market, fears of a recession and debate over an economic stimulus package, the economy has been hard to miss in the news lately. Pile that on top of a housing slump, high energy prices and long-standing anxiety over globalization, and suddenly dollars and cents are at the top of voters minds, say polls and campaign-watchers.

"It has shifted to become the main issue," says Steven Puro, a political science professor at St. Louis University. "It has an immediate effect on everyone's lives and livelihoods."

And voters want to know how those who would run the White House plan to deal with it. In state after state through the early primaries, voters say the economy is their top concern, no longer terrorism, health care and Iraq.

Candidates have responded accordingly, addressing worries both broad and, often, local.

In Michigan, where auto-industry woes have dragged the whole state into a slump, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney stumped for the Republican nod on a message of economic revival, promising federal aid to the beleaguered state and help for the Big Three automakers. He won, beating rival Sen. John McCain, who emphasized re-training workers for new jobs, rather than fighting to revive their old ones.

In Nevada - which leads the nation in mortgage foreclosures - the Democratic contenders pushed their plans to ease the burden on at-risk homeowners and take on predatory lenders.

But the malaise is about more than just local issues in early-primary states.

In a Gallup poll early this month, 77 percent of consumers nationwide said they think the economy is getting worse. In the weeks since, a string of reports on consumer spending, unemployment and home sales have made the mood even darker. And a plunge in overseas stock markets Monday prompted Sen. Hillary Clinton to warn of "a global crisis that could very well thrust us into a deep, long recession."

But what to do about it?

The answer to that question, as you may expect, depends largely on which party a candidate comes from.

Most of the major Republican contenders are prescribing tax cuts to free up spending and make U.S. companies more competitive in the global marketplace. While former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has won some support with talk of "fair trade" and more protections for U.S. workers, most of his competitors generally favor wide-open markets. And Arizona Sen. John McCain is the only GOP hopeful to express any support for government intervention in the foreclosure crisis, and then only if current efforts by the White House to work with banks don't succeed.

Vastly different approaches

But they do have differences.

Romney, for instance, has been touting his decades of experience in the corporate world, saying it has prepared him well to be a competent manager of the national economy. Huckabee has stressed the importance of helping low-income workers. And McCain has focused on cutting wasteful government spending to help the economy be more efficient. Like a few of his GOP rivals, McCain has acknowledged he's more used to talking about foreign policy, but they've all been burnishing their economic messages in the last few weeks.

The Democrats, on the other hand, have been talking economics for months, noting that even in the good times before the current troubles, a lot of ordinary Americans felt left behind.

Economic inequality, the foreclosure crisis and the loss of jobs overseas have been constant themes in the campaigns of Clinton, former Sen. John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama. All three want to roll back the 2001 tax cuts, invest in "green industry" jobs and provide more tax credits for education and child care. Their differences are more a matter of approach.

Clinton, for instance, has positioned herself as the most experienced and prepared manager. Edwards has been sharply critical of big business. Obama has focused on targeted tax relief for working families.

Democrats have a natural advantage talking about the economy these days, said David Kimball, an associate professor of political science who studies elections at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, both because they tend to prescribe more aggressive programs to fix it and because they're not the party in the White House right now.

"This puts the Republicans in a tough position, because if they acknowledge that the economy's bad, implicitly they're criticizing President Bush and his stewardship of the economy," Kimball said. "They have to avoid criticizing President Bush but still show that they care about the issue."

One way to show they care is to weigh in on Bush's proposed economic stimulus package, something just about every major candidate has done in recent days. Many, from Romney to Clinton, have made their own detailed proposals. Of course, any stimulus will happen long before whomever wins takes office, and they'll never be held to the specifics of what they say now, Puro notes. For that matter, the current troubles could be just a memory by Inauguration Day.

"It's very difficult to know where the economy is going to be in January, 2009," Puro said. "So what they're proposing in January 2008, these are just general ideas they're expressing. They don't want to get into anything too specific, because then people might hold them to it."

Any president's influence over the economy is somewhat limited, at least compared to the war in Iraq or legislative matters like immigration policy. A president can push for a short-term stimulus package or negotiate new trade policies. But amid the forces of global economics, the White House is just one actor in a big play.

Still, it is essential for the candidates to connect with people worried about their jobs, their mortgages and their kids' futures, Kimball said. For many voters, it's an issue that strikes much closer to home than war or immigration, particularly when times are bad. And the conventional wisdom is that times will be bad at least through the primaries.

"It seems like economic anxiety is going to be with us for some months," Kimball said. "So I would not be surprised if the economy is the No. 1 issue in the presidential campaign for the rest of the year."