04:21 pm
Obama Leads, McCain Bails after Vote
Barack Obama today after the House defeated the bailout bill:
I was on the phone with Secretary Paulson as well as the Speaker of the House and the Congressional leaders, because they are still trying to work through this rescue package. And obviously this is a very difficult thing to do. It’s difficult because we shouldn’t have gotten here in the first place.
We meet here at a time of great uncertainty for America. The era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and in Washington has led us to a financial crisis as serious as any we have faced since the Great Depression. They said they wanted to let the market run free but instead they let it run wild, and in the process they trampled our American values of fairness, balance, and responsibility to one another. Now, because of speculators who gamed the system and regulators who looked the other way, your jobs, your life savings, and the stability of our entire economy is at risk.
So we’ve been left with no good options. And today, Democrats and Republicans in Washington have a responsibility to make sure that an emergency rescue package is put forward that can at least stop the immediate problems that we have so we can begin to plan for the future.
Now, as I said, this is a hard thing to do. And, you know, right now, Democratic and Republican leaders have agreed, but members have not yet agreed. And there are going to be some bumps and trials and tribulations and ups and downs before we get this rescue package done.
It’s important for the American public and for the markets to stay calm, because things are never smooth in Congress, and to understand that it will get done. We are going to make sure that an emergency package is put together because it is required for us to stabilize the markets and to make sure that when a small business person wakes up tomorrow morning, he’s going to be able to make payroll. That your, that your 401k and all the planning you’ve done for your retirement, that that’s still going to be there. That we’re not going to be losing jobs at a faster clip than we’re doing right now, so I’m confident that we are gonna get there, but it’s gong to be a little rocky. It’s sort of like flying into Denver. You know you’re going to land, but it’s not always fun going over those mountains.
Pretty good — though I’m not crazy about him saying that “your jobs, your life savings, and the stability of our entire economy is at risk,” as it reinforces the Paulson-Bernanke-Chicken Little rhetoric. But for the most part, thoughtful, responsible, the right thing — the adult thing — to do.
What about John McCain?
When McCain boarded his campaign plane with Rob Portman in preparation for his flight to Des Moines, just as the bailout legislation was defeated on the House floor, he ignored questions shouted by reporters from under the wing about the fate of the bill. It’s unclear if he could hear the questions, but when he heard reporters shouting his name he turned and waved.
Uh, okaaaay. What about any of McCain’s spokespeople? Here’s Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s chief economic advisor (whose best-known theory is that McCain is responsible for the invention of the Blackberry):
Just before the vote, when the outcome was still in doubt, Speaker Pelosi gave a strongly worded partisan speech and poisoned the outcome,” said McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin. “This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country.
Sigh. This is putting country first? Blaming a speech by Pelosi? Has anyone checked the House cameras to see just how many Members of Congress were actually listening? And the speech itself is hardly a barn-burner:
[W]hen was the last time someone asked you for $700bn? It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush administration’s failed economic policies — policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything-goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system.
Democrats believe in the free market, which can and does create jobs, wealth, and capital, but left to its own devices it has created chaos.
Democrats insisted that legislation responding to this crisis must protect the American people and Main Street from the meltdown on Wall Street. The American people did not decide to dangerously weaken our regulatory and oversight policies. They did not make unwise and risky financial deals. They did not jeopardise the economic security of the nation. And they must not pay the cost of this emergency recovery and stabilisation bill.
Today we will act to avert this crisis, but informed by our experience of the past eight years with the failed economic leadership … We choose a different path. In the new year, with a new Congress and a new president, we will break free with a failed past and take America in a new direction to a better future.
So we’re supposed to understand that this caused a handful of Republicans to get so mad that they chose to vote against the bill to teach Nancy Pelosi a lesson? Well congratulations guys — all you did was help cause the Dow Industrials to crash by more than 725 points.
Just wondering — where was John McCain at that time? Was he working the phones, urging these Republicans to put country first?
No.
After “suspending” his campaign to return to Washington last week and help negotiate Congress’s Wall Street bailout, McCain was back on the campaign trail today at a rally with his running mate where he criticized his opponent for not responding to the financial crisis in a similar fashion.
“I went to Washington last week to make sure that the taxpayers of Ohio and across this great country were not left footing the bill for mistakes made in Wall Street and evil and greed in Washington,” McCain said.
Despite numerous earlier claims that this crisis was not a situation to be politicized, McCain then added, “it’s a matter of record Senator Obama took a very different approach to the crisis our country faced. At first, at first he didn’t want to get involved. And then he was “monitoring the situation.” That’s not leadership, that’s watching from the sidelines.”
McCain’s remarks came hours before the bailout legislation failed on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Although McCain said last week - and repeated today - that it wasn’t his style to “simply phone it in,” he spent roughly five hours on Capitol Hill last Thursday (including a meeting with Obama at the White House), and less than two hours there on Friday before traveling to the debate. He then spent most of the day on Saturday making phone calls from his campaign headquarters in Virginia, a few miles away from the Hill.
Given the fact that he suspended his campaign last week in order to dash (after brief visits to Katie Couric and Bill Clinton and Baroness Lynn Rothschild) back to Washington to help find a solution to this crisis, what is he doing getting on a campaign plane now? Shouldn’t he be staying in Washington?
Here’s a prediction for you: McCain will emerge from that plane as a born-again populist, ready willing and able to stand up to Barack Obama, George Bush, and those bastards who voted for this plan. To be clear, I’m not talking about the responsible “we can do better by this country and get a better bill” sort of populism that is reflected in Obama’s remarks. No, we’re talking about a “I’m going to burn the house down but boy are you going to enjoy the spectacle” sort of crazy-ass populist rhetoric not seen in this country since the days of Huey Long.
Because, as we all know now, he’d rather destroy the economy — and the country – than lose an election.
So much for McWeaksauce. Time now for McKingfish.