7 posts tagged “financial crisis”
McCain was behind in the polls being trampled consistently by Obama until late August. He chose Palin which electrified not ‘the base’ as the pundits are now saying but everyone. It had been a long drawn out campaign everyone was well known and genuinely this woman plucked from obscurity piqued the interest of everyone outside stalwart Democrats.
Her failure to make good on that freshness by revealing too limited a knowledge of international affairs, looking like she lacked credibility to carry the office should McCain pass away in office, embarking on a shopping spree of $150,000 and in the latter days plotting her own career beyond 2008 election. All of this certainly failed to make good the boost in the polls that she had initially given McCain. But failing to convert on promise and ‘losing it’ for the Presidential nominee are two very different things.
Palin was McCain’s choice. All the evidence shows that he had not done enough homework. But he was always going to have a tough time to differentiate himself from an unpopular President Bush. But he was always going to have a tough time in the present financial crisis. One of his least significant problems was that he had a running mate who was a bit too passionate, a bit too wet behind the ears and a bit too provincial for the majority of America to accept.
The two candidates have now virtually no time to change the momentum in time for election day: McCain cannot capture enough attention on the national stage and Obama has shown himself remarkably accident proof. Reasonable goals the McCain-Palin ticket can aim for must be to stop an all out rout of the Republican Party, ceding one party control of the White House and the two Houses of Congress. There is also valuable work to be done by the Republicans to try and frame the debate and at least some of the issues that the new Obama Administration will take on. How this is done without surrendering is going to be incredibly difficult for the Republicans.
Obama must seek as big a mandate as possible. Only with a resounding endorsement will he have the power that, he should argue, the current situation necessitates. The Democrats will have the poisoned legacy of a financial system in turmoil and a war to end. The problem for them is that they will be expected to bring an elegant end to them both. This is much easier to suppose than to execute. Unless there is a clear timetable to work to six months passes remarkably quickly and that is about as long a political honeymoon as any person or party in power can expect.
Even with the conclusion of the election beyond doubt – there is much to play for in these last days.
If McCain was a plane he would be a short range attack one. If Obama were a plane he would be a long range bomber. As a result the debate this evening was a fly past of different machines, at different heights just out of each other’s shooting range. Time and again it was McCain that tried to reach the dizzying heights that Obama still commands.
The financial crisis, energy independence, climate change, tax plans, abortion, dodgy connections, government waste, negative campaigning and education were all issues on which McCain tried to erode the smug looking assurance of his adversary. McCain’s passion was as palpable as Obama’s unflappability. Obama managed to dispatch his sparring companion’s attacks. There was nothing that changed the ordering of the game (as well might be expected).
The media will not have anything to seize upon of substance from this evening. The momentum is strongly against McCain and there is little time left now to get back in the game. He will struggle from this point on in the mainstream media to prove that he can control the course of events better than Obama. But the truth of the matter is that the events that have taken control of the situation are those that are outside the debating hall.
McCain had an uphill struggle at the debate last night. He is fighting against all the dynamics that are against him at the moment. There is unease at the financial crisis, there is disenchantment with the Republican party and there is a bout of soul-searching that is uncharacteristic for America and for Americans.
McCain punched hard and hard against an edifice that was far from as hardened as he was. There was no circling of Obama on any issue even as McCain paced relentlessly up and down the stage trying to literally circle the man. (Some may consider it to have been unfair for an aging Senator to be expected to perch on a bar stool for that long – this may well have been the reason for McCain otherwise inexplicable reason to pace up and down the floor so much).
Yet even though the Democrats are in poll position, there is no particular enthusiasm for the Democrats or for their response to the problems that the country is facing. For all of Obama’s charismatic charm there is no wholesale adoption of the Democrats’ central economic platform. This correspondingly would suggest a weak mandate if they win office to change things around too much. There is no optimism of any description – an environment in which the election to the supreme political office might well just prove a pyrrhic.
There is a small amount of time left before the general elections, but the last month still has two presidential debates as well as all of the twists and turns that this extraordinary financial crisis can muster. This weekend has seen activity from Palin that has already driven from the news the Republicans withdrawal from keeping Michigan in ‘play’. In this race the Republicans, although underdogs, are still not ‘dead dogs’ as the Democrats could have achieved by now.
Palin’s highlighting of Obama’s connections to Mr Ayers (and by implication the Weather Underground) will not, by itself, win any more voters to the Republican cause. In order to roll back Obama’s lead, the McCain/Palin ticket needs to organize a concerted attack that weaves together a pattern that will make sense in terms of a narrative ark to the American people. Otherwise these attacks will just appear as they do hitherto – shots in the dark.
Obama needs to maintain a steady hand in face of these pinpricks. At a certain point, if these attacks do morph into a strategy he won’t be able to brush them off as mere slurs and smears. Headlines are how politicians rise and fall. Headlines if they persist become the news.
The Vice-Presidential debate held this evening was a much more hard-hitting affair than the Presidential one. Palin came in with fire burning in her belly and a passion that was barely disguised. Biden took a great deal more time to warm up but by the foreign policy section he was ablaze. There was much of substance in this continuous one hour and a half. There were plenty of disagreements and plenty of scrapes.
Palin had much more to prove than Biden, and she held up well. Her fresh face and almost constant smile was accompanied with studious, well researched and well delivered responses. On both sides there were plenty of ducked questions (perhaps more by Palin). On both sides there were shots at the legislative records of each of the Presidential nominees (perhaps more by Palin on the inevitable discrepancies between Obama and Biden’s record).
Biden promised McCain-Palin ticket represented more of Bush of the administration. He also pointed to the healthcare deficit of McCain’s plans. Palin promised to change the way Washington worked flaunting McCain credentials as a maverick. She also pointed to the greed and the corruption that had got the American people in financial crisis. This debate did not, and was realistically going to be, a changer of the game.
There is no choice to the recovery plan suggested by Hank Paulson Secretary of the Treasury. The political parties play games with this package at their peril. The price tag of the recovery package standing at $750 billion may seem like a staggering amount, and it may seem as if there is not enough political oversight but now is the time for swift and decisive action if this problem is to be contained. The political debate and the blame game can start in earnest once the situation has stabilized: Indeed, everyone recognizes that there will be more oversight and regulation of the financial services sector hereafter.
But that debate must happen after the brittle fabric of trust in the market has been at least partially mended. The very fear that the package may not go through has let the S&P today drop by more than 3.5% (which constitutes an evaporation from the market of at least four times the cost of the package itself). ‘Political oversight’ of this critical, executive and professional recovery plan is a dangerous thing as it slows down the speed that is required for this operation and it is precisely at this point that special interests and lobbyists climb aboard. It should be remembered that Democratic chairman of the house services committee, Barney Frank, who has been the loudest critic of the plan as it stands has not only been one of the great apologists for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, but has presided over the predictable demise of these monsters. The Presidential candidates for their own benefit as well as that of America should side step this issue rather than turn it into a political football. They can start to clean up Washington or change the way it works by signaling that they support this package and thus allowing the Treasury a free hand in cleaning up the financial services sector as they see fit. This is not undemocratic this is a democracy rising to the challenge in the face of a crisis.
