The Republicans blame Democratic
efforts to expand home ownership
for minorities and the poor by loosening credit requirements. The Democrats blame Republicans for loosening the regulatory oversight on all the debt that flowed from those bad loans. The mainstream media interpretation has generally emphasized (surprise !) the Democratic view of things because the meltdown happened on a Republican president’s watch and because that Republican president happened to be the despised George W. Bush. There is, after all, no bad outcome of any significance at any point of the globe that cannot somehow be made to appear Bush’s fault. At best, Democrats are credited with good intentions, for trying to help the poor, while, predictably, the GOP gets linked to any story involving Wall Street greed. Everyone comes up a loser; except, that is, for Barack Obama. Apart from being more closely tied in public perceptions to his party, the crisis also hit at a time and in such a manner as to blunt the considerable momentum that John McCain had acquired coming out of the Republican convention. He had finally taken the lead in the polls after trailing for months, only to see it begin to evaporate on the day the word “crisis” began to be used regarding the nation’s overextended credit system. The longer the crisis persists or the worse it becomes, the more Obama benefits. Indeed, the more the focus is on the economy—and it is currently there to a greater extent than in any election since 1932—the more it helps the fresh face who can more effectively offer “change,” even if, as in this case, such offerings lack much in the way of specifics. The emphasis upon the nation’s crumbling finances also helps keep off-page those areas where McCain either has the clear advantage, such as terrorism and foreign policy, or that wide array of social and cultural issues where Obama is potentially vulnerable. The first McCain-Obama debate perfectly reflected all of this, with fully a third of what was supposed to be a discussion of foreign policy issues taken up by financial ones. The shift from there to Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., produced a shift in McCain’s demeanor comparable to that of a man who has finally spotted land after being adrift at sea without food or water.
The problem goes beyond the fact that the economy has suddenly become the dominant issue. More relevant is that McCain obviously has so little interest in economic issues and no ideological equipment with which to discuss them. Because Republican nominees tend to view politics largely as a personal struggle between the pure and the corrupt, he tends to be uneasy with analyses of supply and demand and the workings of labor markets, and more inclined to rant about earmarks, specialinterest influence and tax loopholes. McCain’s erratic performance during the first few days of the crisis, in which he scurried to Washington and then refused to debate until a deal was reached, only to later change his mind, has been dismissed as a campaign stunt. More likely, it was simply another case of McCain being true to his own self-image as the knight in shining armor riding in on his white steed to save the day. The thought of not doing something, anything, at such a time, even if doing it makes no sense and ends up making him look foolish, is foreign to his temperament. People during crises are often thought to rely upon the tried and true, or at least the experienced, over the unknown and untested. In reality, people are far more likely to take chances and seek a savior. Franklin D. Roosevelt actually offered nothing substantially different from what Herbert Hoover had been doing when he overwhelmed him in perhaps history’s greatest repudiation of an incumbent president. (Only later did the liniments of what would become the New Deal become visible. ) But what FDR offered was new leadership with a soothing, reassuring tone, much as Obama is attempting to do now. The great irony in all of this is that McCain was one of the few figures in Washington who tried to spread the alarm about the nation’s shaky credit system, going as far as to give a speech before Congress specifically warning about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and co-sponsor a proposal, the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, that subsequently failed due to fierce Democratic opposition. So who ever said politics is fair ?
—–––––•–––––—Free-lance columnist Bradley R. Gitz teaches politics at Lyon College at Batesville.
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