This is what we have to look forward to?

Is it odd to be more excited about the presidential primaries than the general election?  During the primaries, I tracked the news closely and followed the debates like boxing matches.  With the candidates selected I find myself far less enthusiastic.  Like Paul Newman’s Butch Cassidy, I find myself asking, “Who are these guys?”  What do they stand for, and how would each of them address the challenges we face?

If their reaction to the current financial crisis is any indication, we’re in for a long dearth of leadership.  I subscribe to the “it’s the economy, stupid” school of politics for many reasons.  I’m a business geek; I work for bank holding company; and our family is shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for adoptions while still trying to fund our retirement.  Any candidate who offers a real possibility of extending social security, repealing the alternative minimum tax, and improving adoption tax credits has my attention. What I’m hearing from the candidates regarding the Wall Street crisis is not encouraging.

John McCain asserts the “foundations of the economy are strong” and then contradicts himself four hours later with the statement that “the economy is at risk.”  While technically not mutually exclusive statements, there is enough confusion here to make me uneasy.  Inflammatory comments about wanting to fire the head of the SEC are hardly constructive, and the born-again populist attacks on “Wall Street greed” are insincere and vapid.  I had to agree with the Obama droid who wondered aloud whether McCain was channeling Dennis Kucinich.

Yet Obama is no better.  To listen to him, the entire morass on Wall Street is George W. Bush’s fault.  Bush didn’t see it coming, and therefore didn’t impose “regulations” earlier in the decade.  (The argument about the efficacy of any regulation that could have made it through the Washington machine is beyond the scope of my words today.)   You can’t blame a politician for pointing out the flaws of the incumbent, but the argument has to be legitimate.  Would a Gore or Kerry presidency have prevented the financial meltdown?  I don’t see how.

Now we have McCain wanting to postpone Friday’s debate with Obama to focus on brokering a solution.  At least McCain is trying to do something, though the magnanimity of the effort is dulled by the grandstanding of claiming to “suspend” his campaign.  To anyone who believes that the nominee of a major party is “suspending” anything within 40 days of the election, I offer the investment opportunity of some prime Florida real estate (or perhaps a bridge to Ketchikan).  Politicians need to be well versed in both salesmanship and leadership, but they must not insult the electorate by pretending we don’t know the difference.  Nevertheless, I am intrigued by McCain’s proposal of bringing both nominees to the negotiating table.  This puts the winner in the unenviable position of having to eat his own cooking (or dog food, if you prefer).  If Obama wins, at least we won’t have yet another “I told you so” moment where he holds forth on what he would have done, had he had any involvement in the process at all.  Talk is cheap; whiskey costs money. 

At the moment, I tend to agree with one pundit who said recently that the response to the crisis thus far from both campaigns has been “moronic”.  Whether the debate goes forward as planned, or we get speeches on the capitol steps extolling how each candidate has “reached across party lines” to broker the bailout agreement, we can at least hope for something more detailed on the subject.  We may even get some policy morsels by which to judge these guys prior to putting one of them in the oval office.  There’s a cartoon by Gary Larson showing two bears as seen through a rifle scope.  The bear that is centered in the cross-hairs is looking right at the gun and pointing at his companion with a foolish expression on his face.  Time will tell which bear represents which candidate, but right now they’re both fair game.