Today, on AC 360, CNN just had a segment with Gloria Borgen and David Gergen in which they spoke glowingly of McCain, the Maverick, and blithely suggested that all McCain has to do is abandon his record as a deregulator, and push regulation. What? Are they listening to themselves speak? They are all saying that all McCain has to do is now say that he is pro-regulation, and his problems are solved. Does it occur to them that this would entail lying?
Also, in reference to Obama, despite Biden and Obama going on the warpath throughout the country on the economy, including numerous ads ripping McCain on the economy, Borgen and Gergen just announced that Obama has not seized on this issue (what?), and that Obama has yet to roll out a plan.
Again, the MSM is going to do its best to steal this election, and the comments by the CNN talking heads ignore Obama's record pushing regulations that are directly relevant to this crisis. Indeed, Obama took the unusual step of releasing a 2 minute ad that is focused on the economy, which is discussed in Andrew Romano's column:
http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/09/17/on-wall-street-obama-is-all-wonk-and-mccain-is-all-words.aspx/snip
In fact, it's been McCain's response--not Obama's--that's felt a little light on substance so far. Unlike Obama, McCain has never made a priority of calling for increased regulation on investment firms and insurance agencies like AIG. In fact, "he has never departed in any major way from his party's embrace of deregulation and relying more on market forces than on the government to exert discipline," as the New York Times reported on Tuesday. A decade ago, McCain embraced legislation designed "to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace." Sponsored by top McCain economic advisor Phil Gramm--then a Texas senator--that bill ultimately "helped pave the way for companies such as AIG and Lehman Brothers to become behemoths laden with bad loans and investments," according to the Washington Post. McCain's ideological commitment to deregulation has resurfaced multiple times during the 2008 campaign. Shortly before Bear Stearns collapsed last March, for example, the candidate characterized himself as "fundamentally a deregulator" who's "always for less regulation," and even as AIG faced collapse yesterday, he told Matt Lauer that "we cannot have the taxpayers bail out AIG or anybody else." (He's reversed his position now that the government was forced to commit $85 billion to stop AIG's collapse.)
My point here is not to play a tiresome political game of gotcha. McCain's long-held belief in deregulation is sincere and consistent with his fiscal conservatism. But the current credit crunch has forced him--as both a matter of political survival and rational policymaking--to change his tune. In the past few days, McCain, like Obama, has come out in support of "boosting the regulation of banks, investment banks and other financial institutions" and "tightening the rules on the type and amount of funds financial institutions should hold." On the stump, he's presented himself as a pugilistic populist and champion of regulation who's determined to "take care of the workers" and remedy the "casual oversight by regulatory agencies in Washington" at the root of the current crisis.
The problem is that because this is such a new posture for McCain, he's yet to back it up with much in the way of specifics. Delivered Tuesday in Tampa, his speech on "reforming our financial markets" devoted only three of its nine paragraphs to actual reforms--and even then, McCain spoke in the broadest possible terms. There will be "comprehensive regulations that will apply the rules and enforce them to the full"; "Wall Street operators" who "abus
the trust of the public" will "face the consequences." The closest McCain came to a specific proposal was his promise "reduce the debt and risk that any bank can take on" and "prevent the kind of wild speculation that can put our markets at risk"--laudable goals, but little more than platitudes without actual plans to put in place. Meanwhile, unlike Obama, McCain has not posted any additional information on his website; the senator's economic plan doesn't even mention market reform. "I don't think it's, at this moment, imperative to write down exactly what the plan has to be," Douglas Holtz Eakin, McCain's top economic adviser, said yesterday. "It's just some standards we just have to aim for and we just haven't met." In other words, McCain doesn't need any actual policy prescriptions. Framing himself as a vigorous, trustbusting man of action--Theodore S. McCain, perhaps--should be enough.
For the record, there's nothing wrong with McCain's vagueness--in a vacuum. After struggling against his anti-regulatory instincts, he's currently sounding all the right notes on market reform. And it's great that the candidates are finally debating important economic questions, like whether taxes should be raised or lowered on folks making over $250,000 a year. That said, calling Obama's approach "all talk" is simply hypocritical. Right now, it's McCain who's relying on pleasant words to get by--and Obama who's emphasizing his wonky side. Whether anyone is listening closely enough to tell the difference is another story.
/snip
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