McCain and the Zigzag Express
In this crisis, the GOP candidate has swerved all over the road.
Jonathan Alter
NEWSWEEK
John McCain's whole campaign is based on the idea that Barack Obama is risky, untested and can't be trusted to protect the nation in a crisis. But this week it was McCain who seemed unpresidential, as his Zigzag Express swerved back and forth across the median strip. His approach to the greatest financial crisis since 1933 was erratic and off-key. Would his presidency be any different?
McCain's first reaction to the climactic events of Sunday, Sept. 14, when Lehman Brothers fell, Merrill Lynch was sold and AIG began to totter, was to repeat his longstanding sound bite that "the fundamentals of the economy are strong." When Obama predictably leapt on this clueless comment with a TV ad, McCain quickly backtracked by saying that he was merely talking about the strength of "the American worker" and anyone who disagreed obviously had a problem understanding the importance of working people. He told the morning shows that he was a Republican in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt, though his true views on free-market economics are more in tune with Herbert Hoover.
This year, that just won't do. So Tuesday, Sept. 16, was John Edwards Day in the McCain camp, as the candidate raged against corporate greed. The goal here was to trade on his reputation as a reformer of campaign finance to confuse voters into thinking he also had a long record as a crusader against the sins of Wall Street. After all, the words "reformer" and "regulator" sound similar. In truth, McCain voted in favor of every deregulatory effort that came up for a vote during his 26 years in Congress and bragged well into 2008 about his free-market "deregulatory" bent. As the The Washington Post pointed out, he did raise concerns about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after a report about shoddy accounting, but this was never a focus of his legislative career.
Obama's gauzy attacks on McCain's "philosophy" made him sound like a philosophy professor, which is not exactly the image he needs right now. But his hesitancy during the week looked more prudent than McCain's forthright and impassioned arguments on all sides of all issues. McCain opposed bailing out AIG before he supported it, then opposed it again. He voted to confirm former representative Chris Cox as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2005 and uttered no criticism of him until this week when he said Cox had "betrayed the public trust" and that he would fire him (though the president has no power to do so). When that didn't go over well, he called Cox "a good man" and dropped talk of trying to force his resignation.
(Continued here.)
Jonathan Alter
NEWSWEEK
John McCain's whole campaign is based on the idea that Barack Obama is risky, untested and can't be trusted to protect the nation in a crisis. But this week it was McCain who seemed unpresidential, as his Zigzag Express swerved back and forth across the median strip. His approach to the greatest financial crisis since 1933 was erratic and off-key. Would his presidency be any different?
McCain's first reaction to the climactic events of Sunday, Sept. 14, when Lehman Brothers fell, Merrill Lynch was sold and AIG began to totter, was to repeat his longstanding sound bite that "the fundamentals of the economy are strong." When Obama predictably leapt on this clueless comment with a TV ad, McCain quickly backtracked by saying that he was merely talking about the strength of "the American worker" and anyone who disagreed obviously had a problem understanding the importance of working people. He told the morning shows that he was a Republican in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt, though his true views on free-market economics are more in tune with Herbert Hoover.
This year, that just won't do. So Tuesday, Sept. 16, was John Edwards Day in the McCain camp, as the candidate raged against corporate greed. The goal here was to trade on his reputation as a reformer of campaign finance to confuse voters into thinking he also had a long record as a crusader against the sins of Wall Street. After all, the words "reformer" and "regulator" sound similar. In truth, McCain voted in favor of every deregulatory effort that came up for a vote during his 26 years in Congress and bragged well into 2008 about his free-market "deregulatory" bent. As the The Washington Post pointed out, he did raise concerns about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after a report about shoddy accounting, but this was never a focus of his legislative career.
Obama's gauzy attacks on McCain's "philosophy" made him sound like a philosophy professor, which is not exactly the image he needs right now. But his hesitancy during the week looked more prudent than McCain's forthright and impassioned arguments on all sides of all issues. McCain opposed bailing out AIG before he supported it, then opposed it again. He voted to confirm former representative Chris Cox as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2005 and uttered no criticism of him until this week when he said Cox had "betrayed the public trust" and that he would fire him (though the president has no power to do so). When that didn't go over well, he called Cox "a good man" and dropped talk of trying to force his resignation.
(Continued here.)
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