October 2, 2008
It was the opportunity for a “game-changing move” in the 2008 Presidential campaign. Just as John McCain was dropping back in the polls, providing Barack Obama the chance to “close the deal” even more decisively than he did with Hillary Clinton, McCain missed the opportunity to turn the game around. Last week, he arrived in Washington (after the pseudo-suspension of his campaign) on a mission to save us all from the crisis declared by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. After McCain arrived, he found a number of both Republican and Democratic members of the House of Representatives opposed to the revised, 110-page, economic “bailout bill” (the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008). At that point in time, McCain had the opportunity to break with the unpopular Bush Administration and band together with the 133 Republican and 95 Democratic House members (who eventually voted against the bill) to form a “coalition of mavericks” (oxymoron, non-sequitur or both?) resisting this bailout of the big banks and other “fat cats” on Wall Street. He didn’t. He chose instead, to copy whatever Barack Obama was doing. Besides, his move dovetailed well with the pseudo-“bipartisan” duet he had been playing, throughout the entire campaign, with Joe “The Tool” Lieberman. Had McCain stood with those 133 young Republican members of the House and the 95 Democrats (many of whom consider themselves conservative, “Blue Dog” Democrats) he could have re-ignited his flatulent campaign. (Is it really safe to do that? — Let’s ask Johnny Knoxville.)
Howard Fineman provided an interesting retrospective of this phase in the evolution the economic “bailout bill” at the Newsweek website on September 30:
The Paulson Plan is not great. Some two hundred academic economists have ridiculed it, and so have the House Republicans, by a 2-1 margin. Public opinion (and not just the angry phone callers) is turning against the measure—to the extent that anybody understands it.
But the consensus is that Washington has to do something, and that the current version is far better than what the lawmakers started with.
McCain made a show of returning to Washington to try to jam the original measure through. He deserves credit for the instinct. An old Navy motto is: Don’t just stand there, DO something! That is McCain to the core, and so much the better for it.
But when he got to town, he realized something that no one had bothered to tell him, apparently: the grassroots of his own party (the grassroots that has never really trusted him) hated the Paulson Plan. They weren’t about to support it and risk their own necks. McCain worked the phones, but fell back in the ranks.
When the second revision of this bill (at over 400 pages) finally made it to the Senate floor for the vote on Wednesday, October 1, there were 9 Democrats, 15 Republicans and Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, voting against it. McCain again missed the opportunity for a truly bipartisan resistance to this measure. Such an act would have demonstrated genuine leadership. He could have rejoined his old buddy, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, as well as Florida Democrat Bill Nelson and rising Democratic star, Maria Cantwell from the State of Washington, all of whom voted against this measure. Such a move would have emboldened resistance to the “bailout bill” in the House of Representatives, where the term of office lasts only two years. (The short term results in greater accountability to American voters, who are believed to have notoriously short memory spans.)
Is this bill really necessary? On the October 1 edition of MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Paul Krugman, Economics Professor at Princeton University, admitted that:
… it will be relatively ineffective, although rejecting it will cause a big run on the system. Then we will come back and do it right in January or February …
When Keith Olbermann asked Krugman about the likelihood that nothing consequential would happen if this bill did not pass, Krugman responded by saying that such possibilities have “shrunk in the past week”. Krugman went on to claim that “the credit crunch has started to hit Main Street”, using, as an example, the rumor that: “McDonald’s has started to cut credit to its franchisees.” McDonald’s has issued a press release stating that this was not the case. What is really happening is that the banks are acting like spoiled children, holding their breath until the government gives them what they want, using the threat of unavailable credit as a gun to the head of Congress.
Public opposition to this bailout was best summed up by Peggy Noonan, when she appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on October 1:
But we are in a real economic crisis and the American political establishment said we must do A, B and C to deal with it and the American people … said: “No. We don’t trust you to handle this. We don’t trust you to do the right thing.”
John McCain had the opportunity to stand with those people, as well as the 133 House Republicans and 15 Senate Republicans, to do “the right thing”. He decided to forego that opportunity. Barack Obama said, on the Senate floor Wednesday, that it was not worth risking the American economy and the world economy by challenging this bill. John McCain decided that it was not worth risking his Presidential campaign on such a challenge. That’s too bad for him. The gamble probably would have paid off.
Our Generation Got Old
October 13, 2008
As John McCain’s Presidential campaign goes swirling down the toilet during the final desperate weeks of its existence, we see its surrogates cling to the non-issue of Obama’s contact with 1960s radical activist, Bill Ayers. As I said on October 2, McCain missed his chance to take control of this race by opposing the 700-billion-dollar “bailout bill”, which has yet to inspire the confidence of the investing public, foreign markets or the banks. By reuniting with his old ally from the “campaign finance reform” days, Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, as well as Democratic rising star, Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, the “Blue Dog” Democrats and the so-called “House Republicans” led by Jeb Hensarling and Mike Pence, McCain could have secured his position as the man who would take the Republican Party into the new century. Instead, he chose to follow the advice of the lobbyists who run his campaign: Steve “Skinhead” Schmidt and (Jeffrey Dahmer look-alike) Rick Davis. These “Guys on the Plane” (if I may steal an expression from Peggy Noonan) have their careers rooted in the negative campaigning strategies created by Lee Atwater and refined by Karl Rove. These operatives have no other cards to play. They have no experience in successful reliance upon a strategy, based solely on portraying their own candidate in a positive way.
As the nation’s economic condition becomes more perilous, the McCain campaign leans more heavily on its claim that Obama’s contacts with Bill Ayers should determine the outcome of the 2008 Presidential election.
At this point it’s starting to get funny. Worse yet … it is an indicator (to me, at least) of how old I am and how old my generation has become. Back in my old home town (a place called Chicago) there is a writer for a local paper called the Chicago Tribune. His name is John Kass. Kass is an outspoken opponent of Chicago’s current mayor, Richard M. Daley and Kass has a nickname for him, just as I have nicknames for such worthy characters as Senator Joe “The Tool” Lieberman. On Sunday, October 12, Kass expressed his outrage that Marilyn Katz, Ayers’ fellow member of the 1960s radical group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), is involved in Obama’s Presidential campaign. Kass took particular umbrage at the fact that Marilyn Katz now has a successful public relations firm called: MK Communications. According to Kass, MK Communications now represents the Chicago Police Department, City Colleges of Chicago, the city’s “Law Department” (actually referred to as the Office of the Corporation Counsel for the City of Chicago), and numerous other city departments … including the venerable “Streets and San”. Kass seemed like a shoe salesman trying to fit an old foot that was accustomed to the “militant radical” style of the 1960s, into the new, 21st century, “Terrorist” model. It doesn’t fit. The militant radicals of the 1960s used small bombs to make political statements. There is an absence of information about the number of alleged casualties or injuries resulting from such bombings. Today, “terrorists” use small bombs to take down airplanes and they use airplanes to take down skyscrapers. The use of the “terrorist” label to a 1960s radical is an obvious stretch.
The rant by the Tribune’s Kass about how former radical, Marilyn Katz, has become a “mainstream” figure in Chicago’s Public Relations business community, reminded me of an old song. On August 17, 1969, Grace Slick and her band, Jefferson Airplane, woke up the crowd at the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair with what she described as “morning maniac music”: the title song from their upcoming album, Volunteers. Included among the song’s lyrics was the following passage:
The Marilyn Katz story and the Bill Ayers story tell me that our generation got old. The former radicals of that era are now playing important roles within what they used to consider an archaic milieu, referred to as “the establishment”. Nevertheless, many members of this latest “establishment” generation are in a fight to retain the claim of having “soul” by helping to bring an African-American to The White House for the first time in this nation’s history. The crowds at the McCain and Palin rallies have expressed their fear of what an Obama Administration might bring to America. These McCain supporters have been able to replace their fears of how they are going to economically survive from day to day and how to fund their retirement plans with the fears conjured up by Schmidt, Davis and their ilk. The ball is now in the court of the Obama campaign to help establish a legacy for these people and all Americans – by righting the ship capsized by the “perfect storm” of greed, corruption and deregulation. Another three-pointer would be nice.