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September 15, 2008

New McCain-Palin ad: 'Crisis'

Topics: Political News and commentaries

On dealing with the Wall Street crisis:

ANNCR: Our economy in crisis. Only proven reformers John McCain and Sarah Palin can fix it.

Tougher rules on Wall Street to protect your life savings.

No special interest giveaways.

Lower taxes to create new jobs.

Offshore drilling to reduce gas prices.

McCain - Palin.

Leadership, experience, for the change we need.

JOHN MCCAIN: I'm John McCain and I approved this message.

John Podhoretz on our cascading fiscal crisis (HT - The Minority Report):

Obama, it is said, is the candidate who would stand to benefit from parlous economic news, since Democrats are the ones who have talking so much about the damage to the economy over the past eight years. But recent bits of data are confusing on this score. Since the conventions, Obama's poll numbers on the economy have shrunk and McCain's have grown, so now Obama enjoys only a three-point advantage in the Gallup poll over his Republican rival.

That may change with the Wall Street calamity. But it may not, and here's why. If the public views this as a major crisis, a threat to the American way of life, then this becomes a question about crisis management and not about change. Crisis management is a leadership issue. And when people are asked who seems to them to be a strong leader, McCain outdistances Obama by an 11-point margin.

This provides McCain with an opening he might not otherwise have. But an opening is not a victory. He will have to use the opening to demonstrate the strong leadership skills by announcing some kind of plan on stabilizing markets, how they should be overseen and regulated in the future, and how to make sure that what happens isn't just a bailout of people who took unforgivable risks. Those people have to lose their money. They have to become poor, and they have to lose their jobs and their licenses, so that they are not followed by others who will also believe either that there is no risk in risk or that in the end someone will bear the burden of their folly.

Obama will certainly have a lot to say on this matter, though most of it will probably be in the realm of the trial lawyer -- i.e., the big guy on Wall Street doing harm to the little guy, there should be hearings, we must unmask the conspiracy, etc. The problem for him is that these are uncharted waters, and his populist rhetoric may not work the same magic when the people who stand to lose the most aren't working stiffs but the investor class, which means the American upper middle class, those in the top 20 percent, earning as a household more than $92,000 in a year.

Related reading: Rottenness [John Derbyshire]: How deep is the trouble our financial system is in? Way deep.

Posted by Abdul at September 15, 2008 11:51 AM

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• New McCain-Palin ad: 'Crisis' - Sep 15, 2008