SALON

Tuesday, Mar 25, 2008 4:47 PM UTC

John McCain’s plan to ignore the economy

No "election-year politics," promises the senator. And no substantive policy proposals, either.

By

Topics: 2008 Elections, U.S. Economy, Globalization, How the World Works, John McCain, R-Ariz.,

“I will not play election year politics with the housing crisis,” declared John McCain in a “major” speech on the economy to be delivered Tuesday morning in the Republican-friendly confines of Orange County, Calif. The implication being, of course, that his opponents are engaged in doing precisely that — taking advantage of the nation’s deepening economic woes to score political points. Exhibit A: Hillary Clinton’s “major” speech on the economy delivered in Philadelphia on Monday.

It is instructive to compare the two speeches. Clinton’s speech was larded with references to previous statements she has made concerning the housing crisis and Wall Street’s credit crunch that date as far back as a year ago, and was packed with specific proposals for tackling the foreclosure crisis and associated ills. One can criticize or disagree with her analysis or approach, but the record is clear: the senator from New York has been engaged with the deteriorating economy in real time. McCain, in contrast, has no such record to fall back on, and made only two substantive policy proposals in his speech.

First, it is time to convene a meeting of the nation’s accounting professionals to discuss the current mark to market accounting systems. We are witnessing an unprecedented situation as banks and investors try to determine the appropriate value of the assets they are holding and there is widespread concern that this approach is exacerbating the credit crunch.

We should also convene a meeting of the nation’s top mortgage lenders. Working together, they should pledge to provide maximum support and help to their cash-strapped, but credit worthy customers. They should pledge to do everything possible to keep families in their homes and businesses growing.

That’s it. John McCain’s economic plan is to convene a couple of meetings. Oh, and some more tax cuts. What’s that I hear? The sound of Ohio voting Democratic? It’s one thing to make a high-minded pledge to eschew “election-year politics.” It’s quite another to act willfully ignorant of the pressing concerns of millions of Americans.

The bulk of McCain’s speech’s recaps the broad outlines of what has transpired in the housing sector and Wall Street over the past year and reads as if cribbed from various state-of-the-economy reports previously delivered by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke. It’s hard to see any of it coming as news to his audience, since Orange County was ground zero for the subprime lending industry.

McCain did say that “Capital markets work best when there is both accountability and transparency. In the case of our current crisis, both were lacking … When we commit taxpayer dollars as assistance, it should be accompanied by reforms that ensure that we never face this problem again. Central to those reforms should be transparency and accountability.”

If one was feeling charitable toward John McCain, one could interpret that paragraph as suggesting support for increased government oversight and regulation of the financial industry. But while Democratic legislators have been falling over themselves to suggest concrete ways to ensure more “transparency and accountability,” McCain just waves at the issue. And in the course of making the sensible suggestion that financial institutions maintain “adequate capital to serve as a buffer against losses,” he turns around and argues that the way to encourage that is “by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital.”

Maybe McCain is hoping that his restatement of support for a corporate tax cut and his recommendation to remove “impediments” to capital-constrained financial institutions will get him some corporate contributions for his cash-strapped campaign. He certainly can’t be imagining that any swing-state voters facing ballooning credit card bills or a foreclosure notice in the mail will see anything in his speech to assuage their concerns. But perhaps that OK, because McCain’s straight talk proves he’s too honorable a man to play “election-year politics.”

We’ll see how well that works, in an election-year recession.

Andrew Leonard

Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 18 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations