Not this Sunday. The eye of the global financial storm stalled over New York and Washington and shoved the most compelling election race in years largely to the sidelines.

Operatives for Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama and Republican John McCain were noticeable by their absence on most of the Sunday morning network television talk shows.

Instead, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson starred on the four big shows on NBC, ABC, Fox and CBS, jockeying for position in the emerging joust with Congress over the multi-billion dollar bailout which could be passed this week.

Obama and McCain are simultaneously both central and peripheral figures in the crisis sparked by the debt meltdown which took the US financial system to the brink of collapse.

They spent the last week doling out blame for the crisis and offering competing approaches to fix it -- but lack a prime role in the horsetrading taking place on the rescue package between Congress and the administration.

But whatever remedy is passed, the next US president will likely end up playing a political price when he is handed the job of steadying the traumatized economy next January.

Both candidates have big plans for spending on priorities as diverse as expanding the military and combating global warming and are offering tax cuts as carrots to different sectors of the electorate.

But pre-election spending plans are likely to be shredded and big plans trimmed with the US government footing a bill, likely to total hundreds of billions of dollars, for the largest financial bailout in decades.

"The next president is going to have some challenges -- as we have challenges today, because what we're going through is an unprecedented period of time," Paulson said on CBS's "Face the Nation" program.

The economic meltdown has just added another nightmare to the long list of crises awaiting the next US leader, including the war in Iraq, deepening turmoil in Afghanistan and a nuclear showdown with Iran.

But despite the calls for bipartisanship at what Paulson called a "humbling" national moment, politics started to intrude.

Arizona senator Jon Kyl, a firm supporter of McCain gently jabbed the Obama campaign on "Fox News Sunday" saying it was now beginning to "reevaluate the certainty" of raising taxes on the US "investor class."

Another veteran political bruiser, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer countered that it was fair enough to seek political points.

"First job is to fix this big mess, but a president's elected for four years, a vice president for four years, to talk about their general philosophy and where they go on taxes, if, God willing, we get out of this mess -- very legitimate."

Obama and McCain themselves stayed largely out of sight on Sunday.

McCain took a short drive from his apartment to his campaign headquarters in Washington's Virginia suburbs for a few hours of preparation ahead of his debate clash with Obama on Friday in Mississippi.

He had an event planned later in Maryland and was then heading to Pennsylvania while Obama stayed secluded all morning, before holding a rally in North Carolina later Sunday.

Interviews with both candidates were due to be broadcast by the "60 Minutes" news magazine show on CBS on Sunday night.

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