When confronted with a crisis, one might say it is virtually an axiom that the person who shows up with an overdone eagerness to help is hardly ever the person one had really hoped would show, hardly ever the person whose help one could really use at the moment, and that such a person nearly always has ulterior motives, the degree of which can be measured by the pitch of his eagerness.
So it is, perhaps, with John McCain, deciding at the 11th hour, after a slew of polls indicate that victory for him and the sassy beauty queen of Wassila on November 4th is slipping away, to "suspend" his campaign, and Friday's debate (he hopes), so that he can jump in and lend a hand on matters that, frankly, are so over his head (and Obama's, for that matter) that he might as well be setting everything aside to help Stephen Hawking work out a calculation on black holes.
As many who are paying attention know by now: it was actually Obama who called McCain early yesterday morning, to discuss issuing a joint statement on the financial crisis—something that might be helpful, given the magnitude of the problem, its abstruse and obdurate particulars that hardly anyone understands—after which, some six hours later, McCain got back to Obama, saying, Yes, let's consider that—and by the way, maybe we should call off our campaigns (since I'm falling further behind and feel the need to take another desperate tack) and Friday's debate (since it probably won't help me at the moment) and go do a little bull in the china closet photo op in Washington.
He then goes on TV and announces all this, gets a bunch of BREAKING NEWS headlines, and everyone from Orrin Hatch to Newt Gingrich is crowing that it's the bravest thing ever.
While Barney Frank, on MSNBC, remarked, "Oh, it's just a stunt—"
See video of Obama's press conference below (and pass it on if you'd like, to as many others as you'd like). Also, below, is the link to this morning's article in the NYT on the subject.
And today, our Man in The White House—Katrina W., Or, The Bush who Cried Wolf (but is Really Serious This Time)—will host Obama and McCain to Get This Thing Hammered Out, before it's too late ...
You might as well be calling me in to help get your bathroom project finished before your wife divorces you. Because I've got news for you: unless I've got my checkbook on me, and money in the account—lots of it—I'm not going to be of much help.
You can argue that letting Hank Paulson, of Wall Street, the former bigshot at Goldman Sachs, run this bailout is like turning the fox loose in the hen house, and you might be right. I would say better Hank Paulson than, say, any of the people who have been questioning him these last couple of days, since in all likelihood they're just less competent foxes—people, in any case, who might be just as easily corrupted by $700 billion dollars as the next person—but I could be wrong.
So we put the brakes on this thing long enough to get some democracy into the oversight at least, some checks and balances built in, and preferably an equity position; let's see to it that Hank buys this lousy debt for pennies on the dollar, just like Barclays bought Lehman. Let's, if we have the time, drive a hard bargain, just like Warren Buffett did with Goldman Sachs.
Let's, if we're going to get into the capital markets, even if only as a sponge for lousy debt to spare our economy untold misery, go in with the reasonable hope that, long-term, at least, we're going to make a killing.
As Barclays will. As Warren Buffett will. People, unfortunately, who understand what is happening much better than the average American taxpayer, who not only have a good grasp on the currently unsteady system that supports us, but very likely, also, see through the stagecraft we're seeing this week, the manufactured drama around a fait accompli.
Let's hope—and hope is the best we can do—if we can't necessarily make a killing, that we can at least get a good deal for our $700 billion. That the people taking care of things are paying better attention than the banks who gave out the loans and then sold them to an eager, awaiting Wall Street, than the people who thought it was a good idea to get a loan with no money down, paying interest only, in a hot market, at a teaser rate, to buy a house, the price of which they thought would go up forever.
Let's hope Hank Paulson, or whoever we get to see to this mess, isn't that kind of fool.
And let's hope, down the line, when we're in hock up to our ears, that we aren't so damned stupid as to let the same hustlers who got us into this mess tell us that what we really need to do now is jettison Social Security, and Medicare, and maybe the VA, too, because we just don't have the money anymore. Too much debt, don't know how that happened, but anyway—we certainly can't be raising taxes, because that would just encourage government, and that's never a good idea unless we say it is.
We like to think of ourselves as being all Emersonian self-reliant types, but the truth is we're at the mercy of a system we have little understanding of.
We're on the tit of a mom who really doesn't love us very much.
And act as though we're lucky to have her.
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