A Failure To Communicate (What We Have Here)

John McCain has a fundamental problem. It is that the country blames Republicans for this mess, this enormous, many-tentacled, fundamental economic failure, and McCain hasn't differentiated himself from his party enough. Indeed, as he met with Republicans last Thursday, he seemed to be the leader of their party.  With wrong-track numbers hovering above 80 percent, the thumb is so much on the scale that the political universe is warped; no matter what, gravity pulls voters toward Barack Obama.  The public will be forgiven for agreeing that Republican ideology created this mess, and Republican ideology prevented Republican House members from supporting a bipartisan consensus. Calling Obama a risky, big government liberal -- that hoary, basic, often effective Republican narrative device -- sounds just plain wacky.

 

The public basically understands the bailout as the government's being forced to give a lot of money to people who made bad decisions, and, of course the selling of the plan as a "bailout" doomed it from the beginning.  Taxpayers are rightfully angry that they're being asked to socialize risk, although its costs will depend on the price at which the Treasury buys and sells the distressed assets, but that's a tough point to understand intuitively.

 

The failure of the bailout is being interpreted in some quarters as a Jacksonian-style triumph of democracy over the know-better decisions of the technocratic elite -- Main Street's whims over Wall Street's needs. And yet, this isn't really true. When described as a "bailout," the public opposes it. When the principles of the bill are described without using the word "bailout," they support it. So the failure of the bill, was, really, a victory for the inadequate and time-bound vocabulary that our elected leaders use to explain

 

This was and wasn't a partisan failure. Majority Leader Hoyer and Finance Committee chairman Frank, and Minority Leader Boehner were statesmanlike before the vote. Speaker Pelosi gave a partisan speech at the wrong time; it's indeed possible that it cost her 15 votes. Still, if those Republicans had been of stronger backbones and more nimble minds -- and more mature than Pelosi, who, let's call it, gave a relatively tame, generic partisan speech -- the bill would have passed. Those Republicans were looking for an excuse, and Pelosi gave it to them. It shouldn't matter what Pelosi says; the future of the Republican was at stake.  (Newt on Air Force One, anyone?)  Pelosi's not responsible for how House Republicans vote.

 

Neither presidential candidate took a firm position, although one of the candidates riskily suspended his campaign and intervened, without intervening.  That intervention failed; he is now blaming his opponent and Nancy Pelosi via a spokesman and bemoaning the gridlock in Washington with his own lips.

Neither candidate really explained the trade-offs to the American people.  There was something pernicious, in a way, in both candidates' failure to answer Jim Lehrer's simple question: what will the trade-offs be in January? What, of all the things you've promised, will you not be able to accomplish?

As president, both candidates will rely on the power of the bully pulplit to rally the country, and yet neither candidate has distinguished themselves during the worst financial crisis in the country's recent history.

 

BTW: A helluva week for Sarah Palin to debate, huh?

Tags: bailout | economy | McCain | Obama