McCain the suspender: Let’s keep politics out of politics
Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 9:29 am
- 6 Comments
Purely as a question of self-interest, John McCain’s exit-the-stage gambit makes sense. With cries of impending doom filling the air, he had nothing to gain by sticking around to discuss a subject he ill understands, all the while being pelted with quotations of the Hoover-like things he’s already said and done during his long tenure as a cheerleader of financial deregulation. On Monday of last week, McCain proclaimed the economy “fundamentally strong” even as Wall Street’s latest and gaudiest blowup was unfolding. Since then he’s faced erosion in the polls day after day.
There are those who think the real point of McCain’s whole exercise is to can the vice-presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, but that’s a grace note if it happens, far less urgent than McCain’s own immediate need to find a pretext for disappearing until a bailout is done and the acute phase of the crisis seems past. The ploy also serves the larger Bush administration push to get a deal through Congress with a minimum of reflection and revision, as they so spectacularly succeeded in doing with the Patriot Act and the Iraq War resolution.
But if McCain’s move makes sense for McCain in a narrow and craven sense, the implicit (and sometimes express) embrace of it by news media and the opining classes is a measure of how theatrical and unserious our politics, and especially our presidential campaigns, have become. There’s a political issue of grave consequence at hand? We must cancel politics at once!
The economic crisis on Wall Street is fundamentally a political crisis. The decisions being weighed now, about how to intervene in the economy to keep it from lurching to a halt, and how to minimize–or maximize–the long-term losses to the public at large, will shape the country’s options for decades to come.
We are already vastly in the hole from an Iraq War tab that Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz estimates at an eventual $3 trillion. If the Paulson plan is adopted substantially as proposed (with no provisions, or just token provisions, for recapturing bailout funds from future financial sector profits), that additional debt will guarantee that for practical purposes, only two lines exist on future federal budgets: the Pentagon and debt service. In fact, we are already facing a domestic future that’s drastically circumscribed by Iraq War debt, but that’s hardly a reason to double down.
The enormous national debt functions in part as a political tool, a lesson the Republicans learned a generation ago. After David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s budget director, got over his initial disappointment at being unable to make deeper cuts in federal spending, he came to recognize that the political payoff of supply-side economics lay in the future, when accruing deficits would compel the dismantling of spending programs that were too politically popular to do away with under less dire budgetary circumstances. If Henry Paulson and friends sell this bailout with no consequential payback provisions, it won’t matter whether future presidents and Congresses continue to subscribe to neo-liberal austerity policies in principle. They will have no choice in the matter, because they will be broke.
In theory this is a moment of great potential for the Democrats, not just for purposes of this election but for reclaiming a popular constituency distinct from that of the Republicans. Apart from the half-a-loaf Dodd Plan — which, make no mistake, seems unmistakably superior to the Paulson heist — they have had remarkably little to say about the remedies for a crisis they ought to have recognized as a real election-season possibility.
Barack Obama’s refusal of McCain’s bait was one of the more gratifying things he’s done in this campaign. It was heartening to hear him say that now was emphatically not the time to stop talking about political solutions. There’s no question that Obama has seemed far more measured and presidential than the erratic, dithersome McCain — but who wouldn’t? Obama’s list of conditions for a bailout deal were quickly parroted in essence by McCain, and both amounted to affirmations of what internal dissent in Congress — driven in large measure by intransigent House Republicans — had already made an accomplished fact: On its own terms, the Paulson plan wasn’t going to fly. Finally even George W. Bush said as much last night.
Like the Iraq War, the financial crisis is being framed not as a debate over national direction but one over managerial competency. And managerial competency, vitally important as it may be, is not really a political issue. It is a subject that engenders discussions about the best means of executing a policy, not deliberations over what the policy should be. To the extent Obama and the Democrats accede in this — to the extent their actions suggest only that Obama would be a more responsible manager of crises like the present one — they are taking the politics out of politics, too.
6 Comments
Comment posted September 25, 2008 @ 9:38 am
Wall Street Greed VS Main Street Need
Dear concerned citizens of America and Mass Media of the U.S.A.
As a concerned registered independent voter, forensic psychiatrist, disabled American I made my decision to vote after taking into consideration following joint tickets attributes and characteristics.
1. Has the ticket shown adequate calmness, coolness, and connectedness’s under pressure to lead our nation [Presidential Temperament]?
2. Has the ticket shown sustained sound “Judgment and Caliber”?
3. Has the ticket shown adequate understanding of depth and degree to address the crucial challenges in their their purpose, policies, and positions [ Honesty, integrity and sincerity]?
4. Has the ticket sufficient “understanding and knowledge” of inside Washington workings [Experience]“?
5. Has the ticket reservoir resilience, wisdom, and vigor to address the present and future f our beloved “Great-grand Nation”?
6. Has the ticket enough joint foreign policy experience and exposure based on ” Values, Virtues, Vastness, and ” [American moral soul]“?
7. Has their campaign talk, slogans, ads, plans, and programs based on facts and are they free of fear, fiction, frivolous labels, unfair attacks, negativity, and impulsively? [No "imminent danger to national
security and safety"].
8. Has the ticket genuinely kept on message of country first and politics last and avoided copying [Message change"]?
9.Has the ticket message stayed away from Culture divide and war[ Disaster prevention ]?
10. Has the ticket resisted being surrounded, supported and surrogate’s by divisiveness, distortion’s, and destructive characters, [ Real patriotism VS shiftiness and shameless parrot-ism]?
11. Has the ticket thoughtful, real non-partisan, & non-impulsive plans to address our current economic crisis or political tactics and temperamental statements.
I have personally and professionally concluded that OBAMA-BIDEN ticket will lift and inspire our greatgrand nation back to its greatness within and restore our global standing with the use of maximum, firm
international diplomacy and minimal force if and when indicated {” Peace thru Strenght “}.
12. The era of responsibility has to replace irresponsibility and unaccountability will change to accountability and transparency. The Wall Street greed will change to Main Street need.
Yours sincerely,
COL. A.M.Khajawall [Ret] MD.
Forensic psychiatrist, Disabled American Veteran and Iraq
Freedom team. Grass roots California leader per Senator McCain’s
PS: It is sad and unfortunate that Hon, Temperamental Maverick McCain has been turned into ” Roller-coaster” by his political moves and handlers.
Comment posted September 25, 2008 @ 12:06 pm
…There are those who think the real point of McCain’s whole exercise is to can the vice-presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden,…
KEEP TELLING YOURSELVES THAT!!!!
BIDEN IS THE ONE WHO HAS THE MOST TO LOSE…
GOVERN PALIN WILL BURY THE LIBTARD!!!!!!
Comment posted September 25, 2008 @ 1:47 pm
McCain came in at the right time to stir the pot. Washington is a filthy place where under handed deals are cut all the time. McCain started to open the closet and Barney and Pelosi did not like that. Barney Frank is as corrupt as they come and McCain forced him out of his closet. If everything goes as planned McCain will do the debate tomorrow but the stumbling block of course will be the House.
Comment posted September 25, 2008 @ 1:52 pm
First, the pending debate is on foreign affairs, generally considered to be McCain’s strong suit. Obama is the foreign affairs neophyte. Questions on the economy, while timely, would be totally out of place in this debate. Second, telling somebody to “call me if you need me” is not leadership. That is something less than voting present. Third, McCain has a record of attempting to warn against the current financial mess. See “How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis” by Kevin Hassett at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aSKSoiNbnQY0
“Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that’s worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.”
Comment posted September 25, 2008 @ 7:05 pm
“…Obama would be a more responsible manager of crises like the present one…”
How I wish it were true. And yet Obama has backed off each populist position this week, turning instead to the complicit Rubinomics that grimly marked Clinton’s surrender to oligarchs in the 90s.
No, Obama has betrayed progressives again. As will he ever, for as long as he is the creature of Wall Street campaign donations.
Comment posted September 25, 2008 @ 10:34 pm
McCain said to the Wall Street Journal, in November 2005: “I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.”
In December 2007, McCain similarly said: “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.”
In December 2007 McCain again made a similar statement, while also saying that he’d like to appoint a vice presidential running mate who is “intimately familiar” with economics, Sarah Palin? Is this the financial genius he was talking about?
The Chicago Tribune Interview 12/07: McCain said, “The issue of economics is something that I’ve really never understood as well as I should. I understand the basics, the fundamentals, the vision, all that kind of stuff,” he said. “But I would like to have someone I’m close to that really is a good strong economist. As long as Alan Greenspan is around I would certainly use him for advice and counsel…”I’ve never been involved in Wall Street, I’ve never been involved in the financial stuff, the financial workings of the country, so I’d like to have somebody intimately familiar with it,” he said of a potential vice presidential candidate, if that’s Sarah Palin?
GOD HELP US ALL!!!!!
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
