Fundamentals

People are having fun with John McCain's economic adviser's absurd statement that McCain invented the Blackberry (that "serial liar" tag is going to stick any minute now, right?), but the Obama campaign is staying on message.

"If John McCain hadn't said that 'the fundamentals of our economy are strong' on the day of one of our nation's worst financial crises, the claim that he invented the BlackBerry would have been the most preposterous thing said all week," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

The "fundamentals are strong" line, which is directly analogous to a line spoke by Herbert Hoover the day after the 1929 stock market crash, is really symbolic of what this election is about. Republicans have funneled cash to the moneyed class, removed oversight and regulatory restrictions, and turned Wall Street into a Wild West show. McCain was right there the entire time, and his economic guru Phil Gramm is as responsible as anyone for the mess we've gotten ourselves in. (Krugman had a great line yesterday: "Ben Bernanke and I think Hank Paulson understand that we could manage to have another Great Depression if we work at it hard enough. I think Phil Gramm might be just the guy to do it.") Failed Republican policies have brought us to the brink of financial collapse and Barack Obama knows it. He's released a strong new ad targeting the "fundamentals" line.



And his campaign events are doubling down on this attack and connecting McCain to the Republican establishment which has made a hash of things.

Yesterday, Wall Street suffered its worst losses since just after 9/11. We are in the most serious financial crisis in generations. Yet Senator McCain stood up yesterday and said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

A few hours later, his campaign sent him back out to clean up his remarks, and he tried to explain himself again this morning by saying that what he meant was that American workers are strong. But we know that Senator McCain meant what he said the first time, because he has said it over and over again throughout this campaign -- no fewer than 16 times, according to one independent count [...]

Make no mistake: my opponent is running for four more years of policies that will throw the economy further out of balance. His outrage at Wall Street would be more convincing if he wasn't offering them more tax cuts. His call for fiscal responsibility would be believable if he wasn't for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and more of a trillion dollar war in Iraq paid for with deficit spending and borrowing from foreign creditors like China. His newfound support for regulation bears no resemblance to his scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement.

John McCain cannot be trusted to reestablish proper oversight of our financial markets for one simple reason: he has shown time and again that he does not believe in it.

Even his ads on other topics - like this one seeking to reassure hunters - goes right back to the economy and contrasts Obama's support for workers with McCain's.

The truth is that McCain can't get his story straight about deregulation. He's championed it for years, his economic advisers have championed it for years, and now he's trying to reinvent himself as some sort of populist. The New York Times noted the disconnect today.

On the campaign trail on Monday, Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, struck a populist tone. Speaking in Florida, he said that the economy’s underlying fundamentals remained strong but were being threatened “because of the greed by some based in Wall Street and we have got to fix it.”

But his record on the issue, and the views of those he has always cited as his most influential advisers, suggest that 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.

While Mr. McCain has cited the need for additional oversight when it comes to specific situations, like the mortgage problems behind the current shocks on Wall Street, he has consistently characterized himself as fundamentally a deregulator and he has no history prior to the presidential campaign of advocating steps to tighten standards on investment firms.

In fact, McCain called for more and less government regulation today in the space of an hour.

These are not the terms on which McCain wants to fight the election, but events have intervened. McCain has continued to stand with his party, deny the scope of the problem and hold to the conservative position of free-market nirvana (except when the corporations fail - then it's time to get in line at the Treasury Department soup kitchen for their handout). And now that the excrement has hit the fan, McCain is today proposing - no lie - a Beltway commission.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Tuesday called for a high-level commission to study the current economic crisis and claimed that a corrupt and excessive Wall Street had betrayed American workers. [...]

Appearing Tuesday on the three network morning shows, McCain said there was indeed a financial crisis and that to understand what had caused it, the nation would need a review on the order of the one led by the Sept. 11 commission. [...]

"I warned two years ago that this situation was deteriorating and unacceptable," McCain said on "Good Morning America" on ABC. "And the old-boy network and the corruption in Washington is directly involved and one of the causes of this financial crisis that we're in today. And I know how to fix it and I know how to get things done."

If there was ever a do-nothing solution to a problem, it's to convene a commission of insiders to write a paper that'll sit on a shelf unread. Obama mocked this today.

Just today, Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book - you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem. But here's the thing - this isn't 9/11. We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I'll provide it, John McCain won't, and that's the choice for the American people in this election."

Cynics resist the idea that a Presidential election can be about issues anymore, but outside events have a way of making talk about lipstick and arugula look a bit dated. Obama's doing the right thing.