<<Obama is AWOL on the ecoomic situation.>>
That seems to be the GOP talking point du jour. On Larry King Live last night, this guy kept parroting that line over and over again, until even Larry King got fed up with him, a rare occurrence indeed.
I think there is a fundamental desire for change in the country. You are really talking "instant solution" which is not at all the same thing. Obviously I can't speak for the country, but I'll tell you my take on this, because I think there are a lot of Americans right now who see this the same way.
This problem is NOT going to be solved by some quick-fix policy spat out overnight by a bunch of policy wonks working for either candidate. So I'm not particularly impressed that McCain now claims to have a solution or that Obama doesn't. McCain in fact was spectacularly unimpressive, being against the AIG bail-out on Monday and for it on Tuesday.
The problem was like a slow-growing cancer, but it required a specific kind of environment over the past years in order to grow at all. That environment was provided by both Democrats and Republicans - - it was an instinctively "pro-business" attitude which has somehow come to mean anti-regulatory, and it was an environment that went from anti-regulatory to laissez-faire to sauve-qui-peut in a relatively short period of time. For most of the last eight years, this process accelerated under a Republican President and a Republican Congress.
How did it happen that the elected representatives of the people were at once so solicitous of the corporate interests involved and so cavalier towards safeguarding the interests of the American people who elected them and whom they were sworn to protect? IMHO, it can all be explained by the realities of campaign financing. John McCain's role in the Keating Five scandal, whitewashed though he ultimately was, provides a textbook example of how it works - - lavish campaign financing, expensive vacations, golfing trips and the good life in general, whatever it takes for whatever candidate or office-holder is being wooed - - and the sucker takes the bait nine times out of ten. Does what's expected of him.
You're right - - Obama's AWOL on the economic situation. That doesn't matter. What DOES matter is that he's not on anyone's payroll. Tony Rezko's in jail. He's not writing any paycheques and if he were, he's very, very small stuff compared to guys like Charles Keating. His interests are strictly local, not national. He might be the kind of guy Obama had to rely on when he was just fighting his way off the streets of Chicago, but he's a long way past that now. The people KNOW where Obama's money comes from, and it ain't Tony Rezko. Obama's money comes truly from the people. People like them, his supporters.
So what people can understand very well is that when Obama DOES make a decision on the economy, or on anything else, it's going to be UNINFLUENCED by the kind of people who in the past could buy John McCain, or both sides of the Congressional aisle. Obama's a new kind of candidate precisely because he's got a new source of campaign funding. THAT is the kind of change that people want. An elimination of the special behind-the-scenes powers and the candidates that they could buy and sell.
<<BTW are you aware that AIG (85 Billion) was regulated by the state of New York. The guy at the helm was an Elliot Spitzer appointee.>>
Weak, BT, incredibly weak. AIG operated nationally and internationally. It is not the State of New York that is bailing out AIG, it is the United States of America. You can't blame this one on Spitzer any more than you can blame it on Clinton. The Republicans have had EIGHT YEARS to fix the problem.
<<Fannie and Freddie were creations of FDR and semi privatized under LBJ.>>
Yeah, and George Lincoln Rockwell, the late head of the American Nazi Party, was the son of Norman Rockwell. At some point in a progeny's life, the parent ceases to bear any responsibility for his actions. They accomplished a lot under many Presidential administrations. Under Bush, they soured and went bad. The Republican President and the Republican-controlled Congress had almost eight years to see the problem developing and did nothing to head off the looming disaster. Leadership?
Sorry, BT, eight years is a long time. Too long to blame on the Democrats. I'm afraid your brand is fucked. It's tainted meat, and nobody's buying. This is gonna be a landslide.
