Former Hillary Clinton campaign operative Howard Wolfson has a column up on the New Republic web site claiming the presidential race is over and Barack Obama has won. Here’s Wolfson’s closing graphs:
“Its easy to lose sight of it in the day to day coverage, but the collapse of Wall Street in the last weeks was a seminal event in the history of our nation and our politics. To put the crisis in perspective, Americans have lost a combined 1 trillion dollars in net worth in just the last four weeks alone. Just as President Bush’s failures in Iraq undermined his party’s historic advantage on national security issues, the financial calamity has shown the ruinous implications of the Republican mania for deregulation and slavish devotion to totally unfettered markets.
“Republicans and Democrats have been arguing over the proper role of government for a century. In 1980 voters sided with Ronald Reagan and Republicans that government had become too big and intrusive. Then the economy worked in the Republicans’ favor. Today the pendulum has swung in our direction. Republican philosophies have been discredited by events. Voters understand this. This is a big election about big issues. McCain’s smallball will not work. This race will not be decided by lipsticked pigs. And John McCain can not escape that reality. The only unknowns are the size of the margin and the breadth of the Democratic advantage in the next Congress.”
You can read the rest of Wolfson’ piece here.
It’s tempting to agree with Wolfson, at least to the extent that the survey data is today almost across the board extremely favorable to Obama and that moves like John McCain abandoning Michigan a month out are the first clear evidence of the spread of cold panic within the Republican campaign.
Or not. I think Wolfson is premature for two reasons: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It all depends on whether McCain is willing to make the toughest argument, make it relentlessly from now until election day and to often make it in joint appearances with runningmate Sarah Palin.
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air points to McCain’s speech today as evidence that such a decision has been made:
“This crisis started in our housing market in the form of subprime loans that were pushed on people who could not afford them. Bad mortgages were being backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it was only a matter of time before a contagion of unsustainable debt began to spread. This corruption was encouraged by Democrats in Congress, and abetted by Senator Obama.
“Senator Obama has accused me of opposing regulation to avert this crisis. I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed. But the truth is I was the one who called at the time for tighter restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that could have helped prevent this crisis from happening in the first place.
“Senator Obama was silent on the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and his Democratic allies in Congress opposed every effort to rein them in. As recently as September of last year he said that subprime loans had been, quote, “a good idea.” Well, Senator Obama, that “good idea” has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
“To hear him talk now, you’d think he’d always opposed the dangerous practices at these institutions. But there is absolutely nothing in his record to suggest he did. He was surely familiar with the people who were creating this problem. The executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have advised him, and he has taken their money for his campaign. He has received more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than any other senator in history, with the exception of the chairman of the committee overseeing them.”
And at Red State, Moe Lane finds more encouragement in McCain’s taking it to Obama on the character issue:
“My opponent has invited serious questioning by announcing a few weeks ago that he would quote — ‘take off the gloves.’ Since then, whenever I have questioned his policies or his record, he has called me a liar.
“Rather than answer his critics, Senator Obama will try to distract you from noticing that he never answers the serious and legitimate questions he has been asked. But let me reply in the plainest terms I know. I don’t need lessons about telling the truth to American people. And were I ever to need any improvement in that regard, I probably wouldn’t seek advice from a Chicago politician.
“My opponent’s touchiness every time he is questioned about his record should make us only more concerned. For a guy who’s already authored two memoirs, he’s not exactly an open book. It’s as if somehow the usual rules don’t apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that.
“Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there’s always a back story with Senator Obama. All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short: Who is the real Barack Obama? But ask such questions and all you get in response is another barrage of angry insults.”
Wolfson is right to point to the central place of the economy as the likely deciding issue in the campaign. But considering the historical record and the abundant evidence pointing to the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act and the Clinton administration’s regulatory expansion of enforcement of that measure in 1994-96, he is way premature to conclude a month out that McCain and Palin cannot show the American people the truth about why they have just lost $1 trillion in wealth as a result of the Wall Street subprime mortgage crisis.
McCain and Palin must detail these facts and challenge Obama – and the rest of the Democratic leaders in Congress and elsewhere – to explain why over and over they resisted attempts by the Bush administration and Republican legislators like McCain to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. All of these facts have been on the public record for years, as explained by this Examiner editorial a few weeks ago.
McCain and Palin should also – by name – challenge The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN and ABC to drag themselves out of the tank they crawled into for OBama months ago and start giving voters the rest of the story about Obama and his employment by an ACORN subsidiary, his legal defense of ACORN’s aggressive pressuring of banks and other lenders to make sub-prime mortgages, and why after only three years in the U.S. Senate, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s political decision-makers made him the second most frequent receipient of their campaign contributions.
The McCain campaign’s high command knows who were the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives who wrote the campaign checks for Obama – and for Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, House Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank and dozens of other key Democrats who protected the two semi-public agencies from congressional scrutiny.
McCain and Palin should make these executives famous now, just as he promises to do with pork barrelling Members of Congress after he is elected. He and Palin should challenge the media to find those execs and ask them why they thought so highly of Obama after such a short time in the Senate.
And if the evidence also points to Republicans in Congress helping shield Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from scrutiny, make them famous, too. Doing so can only enhance McCain and Palin’s claims to be genuine mavericks who will shake up the Washington Establishment, regardless of which party is hurt in the process.
It should be noted that Palin has opened an aggressive line of attack on Obama’s obvious attempts to obscure the true nature of his relationships with unrepentant 60s terrorist William Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I am a bit skeptical that at this point in the campaign this theme will be effective in isolation from the broader case against Obama that is epitomized in his relationship to ACORN, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the genuinely destructive results that are now seen in the Wall Street bailout. Ditto the evidence that the Obama campaign has accepted millions of dollars in foreign campaign contributions and from fake donors such as Mr. Good Will.
Given the givens of the campaign at this point, even this strategy is something of a long-shot, but for once wouldn’t it be inspiring to see a GOP presidential team really taking off the gloves and speaking with brutal honesty about why America is in the shape it is in now and who played the main role in getting the country here?
