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A tragic anniversary

Submitted by Ironman on Tue, 09/29/2009 - 21:49
in

This is the anniversary of a tragic day, September 29, 2008. That was the last day I believe John McCain could have salvaged the 2008 Presidential election.

The McCain campaign started losing altitude following the mid-month collapse of Lehman Brothers, leading McCain to leave the campaign trail to stay in Washington to respond to the crisis.  This led to a confusing set of events surrounding whether McCain would attend the first debate; which he did.  By Monday morning, September 29, it a ppeared a deal to approve the $700 billion bailout was in place and the House was supposedly in line to vote "aye".

Assuming the time had come to return to the stump, McCain left Washington to join Sarah Palin at a rally in Columbus, OH.  This decision doomed his chances.

Many argue McCain was politically dead for even supporting the unpopular bailout , but if there's one thing worse than being unpopular, it's' being both ineffective AND unpopular.  Having chosen the unpopular path, McCain had to, as an absolute necessity, get the bill passed and gotten back on the trail arguing the crisis had been addressed and he helped promote a solution..

While McCain was in Ohio that morning, Speaker Pelosi decided that insulting the Republican party was a good way to spout off when she needed their votes. Enough bailed to scuttle the bill. Many flipped back to support a somewhat amended version a week later. Many of these folks are no longer in Congress.

John McCain faced incredible obstacles in 2008 ...a popular opponent, having to defend an unpopular incumbent President from his own party, and a weak economy. Given this, he needed to maximise his own assets. And he absolutely needed every possible day to draw the contrast with Barack Obama. One rally, even in Ohio, wasn't worth the risk he would lose the chance to punch through with his own message nationally because of events in Washington.

We don't know if McCain whipping the House Republicans would have gotten TARP passed a week sooner, but by failing to put his shoulder to the wheel (and not "assuming the second out of the double play"), McCain cost himself two things he could never recover--he lost a week of the campaign and he lost credibility for returning to Washington only to see things fall apart anyway. The split in the polls reached  double digits in early October, never to fully close.

There's a lesson here somewhere, not that I expect the Beltway brain trust to figure it out. 

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Comments

Excellent Post

Submitted by Freedoms Truth on Wed, 09/30/2009 - 00:19.

The Lehman collapse and crisis that followed itself gave Obama enough headwind to coast to victory ... BUT ... when you look back at it, the Democrat attempt to have Obama be a 'leader' in negotiations was faux stage-management. Obama was a non-entity in it, other than voting. But that's all that was needed, because McCain's own attempt to show leadership on this backfired, and it made Obama look less 'panicky' for not actually making any real effort to get involved.

It backfired because in the end McCain was just going to carry water for whatever 'bipartisan' solution was produced, a solution that wasnt going to be popular. So the Dems knew all they had to was pin it on the GOP as best they could.

McCain did have an opportunity, or window, and that was to be distinctly different from the herd in DC, and in doing so distinguish from Obama on both leadership and positioning. McCain's own bipartisan and inside-the-beltway instincts did him in.

This was a dangerous time and there was a level of panic that went up to the Treasury Secty and to wall street and banks. But a real leader could have seen through that and made a pitch for a saner simpler and better solution than TARP. In the end, the plan was refactored by Paulson anyway - ie the plan to buy toxic assets got scrapped and rewritten, then only in March did they do the buy toxic assets thing.

In reality, a succession of Govt failures and not market failures was responsible for the crisis. A response based on restoring faith in markets by having a more tailored yet immediate response was possible. And it would have been less of a bailout. In short, had McCain gone to DC, met with Eric Cantor, signed up for that Cantor solution of insurance guarantees, FDIC extensions, etc. and said he was for it... THAT would have changed the ballgame.

Then the Dems would have had to choose ... FOLLOW MCCAIN'S LEAD, follow Bush/Paulson/Frank and pass that, leaving McCain in opposition to the Bush/Dem TARP, or DO NOTHING. Obama would have been incapable of any choice that wouldnt show obviously that McCain was the real leader.

Why didnt McCain do that? Maybe that's one of those tests that show presidential material. Frankly, neither candidate stepped up to the bar.

In the end, McCain's failure to show a distinction between himself and Obama on the top economic issue put the nail in the coffin of his candidacy.

 

From that great commie pinko rag, The Economist

Submitted by Mead50 on Wed, 09/30/2009 - 12:04.

The Economist, as the banks began repaying their bailout funds in June:

Despite owning hundreds of billions of dollars of hard-to-value assets, banks seem now to regard as unnecessary the American government’s scheme to purchase toxic loans and securities.

That is both wrong and dangerous. Wrong, because in the depths of the crisis the share prices and borrowing costs of all banks indicated an almost complete collapse in confidence. Some firms did perform better than others, but only relatively so. All the banks benefited from an implicit state guarantee. Even those lenders who never got capital would probably not have survived without government rescues of weaker firms to which they had counterparty exposures.

John McCain's campaign was over the day of Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric.

 

 

off-topic response

Submitted by Ironman on Wed, 09/30/2009 - 18:43.

Even Freedom's Truth said he favored intervention in financial markets post-Lehman; just better planned intervention.

And while I respect people with different opinions, the idea that Tom Ridge or Mitt Romney could have been strong enough personalities to offset the financial whirlpool post-Lehman is risible.   Voters are more worried about whether they are insolvent then if a VP is inarticulate; remember Dan Quayle? 

Now hurry back to the HuffPo to draw up your response, mister fifty

I was responding to you, the OP, not "Freedoms Truth"

Submitted by Mead50 on Wed, 09/30/2009 - 18:58.

Are you not saying that McCain blew his last chance by not fighting against the bank bailout?

Well hey - thank goodness the bank bailout happened. Even The Economist quietly concedes that the it saved the system from an even greater collapse.

Sarah Palin had majority negatives after the Couric interview. She was clearly a blithering idiot. Add in the widely reported fact that McCain had only met her once before picking her, and you have a picture of a man not fit to lead the country.

Mitt Romney would have been ideal post-Lehman. Palin was a jibbering boat anchor.

I've never been able to understand the bitter spite that drives

Submitted by MI-GOPer on Wed, 09/30/2009 - 19:59.

Village Idiots and far Left trolls like Mead in their hate of Palin or Bush or Limbaugh or OReilly or Hannity or Beck.

It's personal.  It's visceral.  It's rooted in all the dark emotions of unrequited anger and resentment and petty envy... and fear.  Palin was an honest, decent person who was unprepared for the natl stage.  She was a bad choice for Veep but her story, and the story of the far Left intent on personally destroying her and her family, tells us a great deal more about how low the Left has sunk than it does about her capacity or incapacity to "handle" a newsreader like Katie Couric.  She is better than Mead on his best day --if he had one.

With lines like "(s)he was clearly a blithering idiot" from a commenter who literally defines the role of Village Idiot is amazing.  She's a mother who has struggled hard with adversity, served the public interest, tried to serve her Party and Country as best she could... all our Village Idiot can do is mash her one more time for spite's sake.

We shouldn't pity Sarah Palin; we should pity the Village Idiot and far Left Democrat trolls here.

And I will never understand

Submitted by Mead50 on Wed, 09/30/2009 - 20:33.

why someone would make excuses for an incompetent dunce without a single achievement in her record just because she looks nice in a photo.

We are supposed to be the party of ideas - remember?

Mead, you have really poor reading comprehension skills

Submitted by Ironman on Wed, 09/30/2009 - 21:55.

for someone who thinks they are soooo much brighter than Sarah Palin

The point of the post; had you actually understood it, was that McCain failed to get passed an agenda item that  a) he halted his campaign to address and b) the failure to pass would directly harm his campaign.

It also noted, albeit obliquely, that the House Republicans decided ---wrongly---that their political interests would be served by voting down the bill in a fit of pique at the excreable Speaker Pelosi. Which was blindingly dumb since many flip-flopped within a week to vote yes on a virtually identical bill. These folks thought that by going against McCain's position they would benefit themselves---instead they both went down.

By the morning of September 29, 2008 whether a bank bailout would occur was already pretty much a moot point---Secretary Paulsen had assured everyone it would happen and both presidential candidates had endorsed it. That said, the only question was whether the Republican Party would pull the bandage off quickly and avoid further damage.  And guess what:, they did it slow and took the blame for the delay.

At least I think I've answered one nagging question. Since you couldn't figure any of this out; you must work on Capitol Hill for the Republican Party. Or maybe you were the McCain aide who told him to go to Ohio that morning. 

So you are saying

Submitted by Mead50 on Thu, 10/01/2009 - 08:17.

that failing to stay in Washington for 10 days to fight for an unpopular bill that was obviously going to pass anyway with the Dems fingerprints all over it  was what doomed him?

Sorry - I'm happy to stick with my thesis that once Sarah Palin started serving up word salad to Katie Couric while being unable to think of anything she reads, and word got around that McCain had only met her once before picking her, the gig was well and truly up.

Here's a nice summary from two wonks who looked at the data:

little in-campaign evidence indicates that the financial crisis triggered by Lehman Brothers’ September 15 collapse was a driving force behind Obama’s victory...The election seemed to draw attention away from economic troubles rather than toward them. 

The failure of the economy to move the campaign is a puzzle in its own right. Election after election shows that perceptions of the economy are a crucial force shaping vote preference. Why then did events as terrifying as the meltdown not translate into electoral decisions? And if the meltdown did not drive the dynamics of the campaign, what did?

We think the answer to this question starts with Sarah Palin, and we base this judgment on the level of detail made possible by the NAES. John McCain’s August 29 announcement of Palin as his running mate surprised the Republican establishment, the media, and especially voters. She made a strong first impression: she enjoyed high approval ratings after her acceptance speech, and the percentage of voters saying that they intended to vote Republican skyrocketed. But within days of the speech, her ratings began a precipitous slide from which she—and the McCain campaign—never recovered. Throughout the rest of the campaign, vote intentions were closely tied to Palin’s approval ratings: each major Palin approval drop was followed, within a day or two, by a drop in McCain vote intention. No other factor moved McCain support with such precision. Comparison of the correlation between running mate approval ratings and vote intentions from 2000 and 2004 confirms Palin’s peculiar importance in 2008.