McCain’s Last, Best Hope Also His Greatest Strength
I predicted in this blog space that McCain would win, and win handily. Then, he did what only a Republican in the Bush-ian mold can do… fritter away the confidence of his core supporters by thinking he can play both sides of the field in an attempt to demonstrate “bipartisan spirit.”
This blogsite has a simple premise. When you define the terms, your terms, it’s hard not to win. It’s true for just about everything you do in life. McCain thinks he is too aboveboard to frame the debate, and apparently thinks it is more dignified to argue premises established by others. That’s a losing approach. He can still win, and my prediction still has merit. But his last chance is before him right now. Today, in fact. He must oppose this bailout.
First, what are the premises of this issue? The first is that Wall Street is the center of the mess. That premise is patently false. It’s Washington. The second premise is that the problem has to do with a lack of regulatory oversight, and that Republicans opposed regulation. The Republicans asked for new regulations and were shot down, all the while a bad regulation, the Community Reinvestment Act, encouraged social engineering and allowed backdoor influence by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with the very regulators supposedly watching them. The third premise is that free and loose credit is good. That is also patently false. There will always be a market to lend to people who show the ability to pay back debts. But it’s not only NOT the end of the world if risky lending dies down, it’s a downright good thing! And it doesn’t matter if you’re a business with a payroll. Companies that depend on borrowing for the solvency of their business model aren’t solvent at all. The fourth premise is that the American people expect bipartisanship and agreement. One news article proclaimed that people ‘blamed” Republicans for the failure of the bailout in the House. “Blamed?” That implies that the American people were anything but stalwartly opposed to this $700,000,000,000 monstrosity. (I’ll write it out with all the zeros until people start to have a mathematical clue as to what a billion actually is.) The fifth premise is that America has already bought into the idea that this financial mess was caused by Republicans, and that there is no point in telling them different. Congress’s approval ratings, however, tell us otherwise, even as it is also ludicrous to assume everyone disapproving of Bush lurched hard left.
To appear “bipartisan,” McCain has accepted every one of these premises with only very slight variations. If he runs his campaign on big government answers, with a smattering of conservative garnishes on the side, against Obama’s campaign of big government answers with an extra helping of demagoguery, Obama will win that contest. Given the choice of McCain’s Democrat-Lite, the voters who don’t simply stay home will go vote for the full-body, full-flavor Democrat option of Obama. If you think government is the answer, Obama was, is, and always will be your guy. This is what conservatives, libertarians, and other right-leaning independents feared all along from McCain’s candidacy.
The $700,000,000,000 bailout is built on bad premises and a disastrous precedent of government interference. While McCain already lent lukewarm support, the American public will not hold it against him if he changes his mind so long as he finds a principled way to do so. McCain, of all people, has that ability. McCain can say that in his concern for the American economy, he demanded action, as we all expected. He can say he was guided by faith in bipartisanship, which he believed was happening. He can also say that he has seen, through Pelosi’s pre-vote demagoguery and subsequent review of the hastily put together bill, that it is not bipartisan in any other way but for an attempt for some politicians of both parties to cover their own corrupt influencing by the Fannie Mae/ Freddie Mac special-interest lobby machine. This tends towards McCain’s strength as a reformer and willingness to fight the establishment in both parties, his ongoing battle against corrupt influence, all while still holding to the values of Reagan-brand conservatism. Those are his own terms, established across a lifetime of service. They are his last, best hope.
Jared A. Chambers
