This is not to say that McCain knows what to do. Faced with an unprecedented
financial crisis involving frozen global credit markets and a maelstrom of
moral hazard, his standard response is to talk about wiping out earmarks and
eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. Memo to Mr. McCain: Waste, fraud and
abuse are the only things holding the system together at this point.
Obama is no better. The man has spent two weeks irresponsibly excoriating
his opponent for saying the fundamentals of the economy are strong - a
perfectly leaderly thing for McCain to have said during a panic. Then,
campaigning in Colorado on Monday, the day the Dow plunged 777.68 points,
Obama proclaimed: "We've got the long-term fundamentals that will really
make sure this economy grows."
Perhaps after al-Qaida seizes Baghdad, a President Obama would finally
declare, "Hey, we can win this thing!"
Meanwhile, President Bush, his popularity ratings stuck at below-freezing
numbers, has decided to cling to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson for warmth
on the grounds that the vaunted former Goldman Sachs CEO has the credibility
to sell the solution to a problem he's been exacerbating for 18 months. When
a reporter for Forbes magazine asked a Treasury spokesman last week why
Congress had to lay out $700 billion, the answer came back: "It's not based
on any particular data point. We just wanted to choose a really large
number."
There's a confidence builder.
As for the reputedly free-market purists of the congressional GOP, with whom
my sympathies generally lie, I cannot let pass without comment the fact that
they controlled the legislative branch for most of the last eight years.
Only now, when capitalism is in flames, does this fire brigade try to
enforce the free-market fire codes without compromise.
I loathe populism. But if there ever has been a moment when reasonable men's
hands itch for the pitchfork, this must surely be it. No one is blameless.
No one is pure. Two decades of crapulence by the political class has been
prologue to the era of coprophagy that is now upon us. It is crap sandwiches
for as far as the eye can see.