Let's be fair here...

Both campaigns have former CEO's and managers of this company and that company and every company. Both campaigns have lobbyists, Obama has no federal but plenty of state level lobbyists while McCain has plenty of both. This really should be irrelevant considering every politician is surrounded by such people. (Which is a part of the heart of the problem in Washington but it is never going to end so it is what it is.) What is relevant is whether those who surround the candidate are blatantly influencing there economic plan and/or whether you can connect dot by dot favors being exchanged. Neither candidate has been caught in such a way so we're left with the facts of each candidate policies.

Now, as Obama paints a nice little picture of the Republican Party being at fault here and forgetting that Democrats played a role in this mess as well, the truth and heart of this is that it isn't solely or even necessarily largely, the Governments -either parties fault. People in the financial business made stupid mistake after stupid mistake. They took gamble after gamble. The companies we see now that are still strong in the financial market are strong because they either A) Knew better than to go down the "stupid path" or B) Started down the "stupid path" but realized it early enough to adjust course.

The Government did play some role in all of this in various ways; some of it being from tearing down regulation too far and from manipulating the market. Our government used subsidies and legislation to push certain aspects of our economy in various directions. For example, from an Op-Ed by Russell Roberts on forbes.com (italics = an added point by me):

Ethanol mandates and subsidies try to create less carbon in the atmosphere than the market would create on its own. The result has been a worldwide increase in the price of corn that has hurt poor people around the world.

Politicians wanted more home ownership than the market produces on its own, especially among low-income families. (Remember the 2004 presidential campaign? How proud we should all be at how high home ownership had gotten...) To encourage this politically popular goal, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were allowed to privatize their profits and socialize (government bailout) their losses. At the same time, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) required them to expand their commitment to affordable housing. Freddie and Fannie achieved this goal by buying bundles of subprime mortgages.

A little known fact about corn ethanol and what it's being used for and who it is being used by: Clorox. That's right; corn ethanol wasn't simply to help create a bio-fuel for cars to run on but also to be used in cleaning products to make them more biodegradable in order to be more environmentally friendly. Here's the kicker though: Clorox also uses a Coconut-based cleaning agent with the corn ethanol. Haven't seen or heard of any coconut subsidies yet the market is using it...
More info: http://www.greenworkscleaners.com/
Interesting fact from a New York Times article by Joe Nocera:

Then again, maybe the S.E.C. is trying to cover up its own culpability in this crisis. Four years ago, the agency pushed through a rule that allowed the big investment banks to take on a great deal more debt. As a result, debt ratios rose from about 12 to 1 to more like 30 to 1. Guess what Lehman’s debt ratio was when it went bust? Yep: 30 to 1.

Just because the S.E.C. passes through a rule allowing such an insane debt ratio doesn't mean any company had to live by it. As we can see, not all of them did, mainly the ones that are now being given tax dollars.

An article by Colbert I. King in the Washington Post with another example of how this isn't simply the governments fault:

Point a finger at those old standbys: greed, imprudent financial decisions and ignorance on the part of people who should have known better....The shame is that banks carelessly extended subprime mortgage loans to the very people who should not have received them in the first place -- those who were least able to repay....But the lure of making a quick buck, coupled with the ability to lay the loans off to Wall Street, which converted them into investment packages, prompted bankers and mortgage brokers to look the other way and book the loans.

You see, blaming the opposite political party for failing to catch this doesn't do anything. It doesn't fix it nor does it address how this was allowed to happen. The truth is that even in times of too much regulation, too little regulation, or "just right" levels of regulation the people controlling the markets will find a way to make a quick buck and create a down turn in the economy after they've gotten rich.
Now certainly some of this was forseen by many people. In different pieces of legislation partly even seen by our two current candidates, but no one person or one political party was going to be able to stop this. Not when they've looked the other way on the economy for 20+ years. Wait, didn't we have tremendous growth in the 90's and pretty decent growth this decade....
So in the end, we're left to wait this out, hope the end is near, and hope that Washington can get something right for once.