Ladies and gentlemen, I freely admit that I don't know enough about economics to claim an educated perspective on the current crisis, so I'll recuse myself from this debate. I do know that $700 billion is an unfathomable amount of money that the federal government doesn't have in the first place because we're already too busy stacking up unfathomable debt in other dubious ways. But that's a different story.
All that said, though, John McCain's contention on Monday that Barack Obama and Democrats are to blame for the failed bailout legislation, and that both "put politics ahead of country," is similar in absurdity to Sarah Palin's claims about her knowledge of Russian foreign policy by virtue of its geographical proximity to her state.
Let's be clear on two points here. First, it was House Republicans who killed this deal, voting against it by a margin of 65-133 (Democrats backed it, 140-95). That's fellow members of John McCain's own political party — who, of course, also went against their own president by rejecting a bailout plan for which George W. Bush himself had been pushing. McCain's response was not to calmly suggest and work out alternative courses of action in light of the failed legislation — as a good leader and good future president might — but instead to angrily and childishly point fingers at his opponent. That's unpleasantly reflective of the typical strategy of the outgoing incumbent, and it's pathetic.
Secondly, the McCain camp also blasted Obama for waging "partisan attacks" after the Arizona senator so nobly "suspended" his campaign (though one could easily argue that this never happened) and called for a postponement of last Friday's presidential debate. But McCain showed up at the debate after all, even though he previously said he wouldn't unless a deal on the bailout plan had been reached. Who was really playing politics here?
McCain clearly fears that his poll numbers will continue to lag as long as the failing economy stays in the headlines and tops the list of voter concerns this fall. Thus, following Monday's developments, perhaps it's understandable that he would come out swinging wildly like a juvenile delinquent who has nothing to lose in a fight. I've often heard McCain described as a "gambler." Given the absurdity of his campaign's remarks on Monday, it now seems that he's gambling on what he might perceive as the stupidity of voters.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
When McCain went to Washington to help solve the crisis, what did he do. He is not on a committee that works on this stuff and his meeting with Bush, Obama, etc was really just a photo-op. I don't blame McCain for the bill not passing but I wouldn't have credited him if it had either.
Everyone is to blame and no one is to blame at the same time. The system is sick and when the system is sick, we are all to blame because we all buy into that said system. At the same time, you can't point to one party, person, or people group and blame them for a sick system. We need to be blaming the system and we need to be FIXING THE SYSTEM! It's way broke and I believe that both parties are honestly trying to do that, but have drastically different views on how to fix the system. The only problem with a 700 billion dollar plan that ends up being a compromise is that it doesn't end up changing the system much. In a situation where everyone, from the top to the bottom, wants a bail-out, but no one deserves a bail-out (since we all bought into the system) we have difficult choices to make. And yes if we do nothing, it all may fall apart, but that may happen anyway. The sick system will continue to plague us if real change doesn't occur... on a systemic level of course.
Post a Comment