I’ve noted that Senator McCain’s campaign strategy appears to be to ignore discussing the economy. Of course on days like yesterday, when the financial services meltdown dominated the headlines, that’s not practical. In that case, Plan B is apparently denial (via TPM Election Central):
Text:
“You know that there’s been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall St. And it is — people are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think still — the fundamentals of our economy are strong. But these are very, very difficult times.”
An enterprising reporter might ask the senator specifically what he considers to be “strong” in our economic environment. Housing prices down 20%? Residential and commercial construction at a standstill? Eight straight months of job losses? Auto manufactures asking for $10s of billions in government loans? Wall Street firms going bankrupt? The only good economic news we had this summer was export manufacturing, but even that appears to be diminishing as the US dollar rebounds and our trading partners slip into recession.
Inquiring voters may wonder who to believe: Senator McCain or their lying eyes? The GOP game plan is to content that things are basically OK, presumably because a contrary admission would be an indictment of President Bush’s economic policies. So we have Republicans such as comedian Rush Limbaugh, who just last week claimed that the economy is better now than it ever was during the Clinton administration. That’s major-league denial.
McCain does concede we have economic issues, but he pretends as if the problem can simply be solved with a few Wall Street regulations:
“I promise you we will never put America in this position again,” McCain said. “This is a failure. We’ve got take every action to build an environment of robust energy supplies, lower inflation, control health care costs, access to international markets, low taxes and reduce burden of government to allow people to move forward toward a future of prosperity. The McCain Palin administration will replace the outdated patchwork quilt of regulatory oversight and bring transparency and accountability to Wall Street, we will bring transparency and accountability and we will reform the regulatory bodies of government.”
Again, an enterprising reporter might ask McCain which of the Bush energy, health care, or tax policies he considers to be a failure.
As for a regulatory fix for our economy, I’m unclear what regulation will successfully and painlessly deflating the biggest housing bubble in American history. Or that will wipe out the burden of debt, food inflation, health care, and high energy costs that is weighing down consumers. That would be remarkable regulatory oversight and transparency.
In 1992 James Carville famously quipped, “It’s the economy, stupid.” The same is true today. Senator McCain is offering Senator Obama a huge opening by dancing around the problem, if not pretending it simply doesn’t exist. Will Obama capitalize on this error and ride an economic agenda to victory?