Maconomics: Don't Trust This Guy With Our Economic Future!

Thursday, May 1, 2008

(Arlington County Democratic Committee)

Report from the Chairman

Peter Rousselot

“I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated”. [Wall Street Journal interview, Nov. 2005.] “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should. I’ve got Greenspan’s book.” [New Hampshire campaign appearance, Dec. 2007.] This is real “straight talk”---straight from the lips of GOP presumptive Presidential nominee John McCain. I’m not buying it, and neither should you!

We don’t have to have a PhD in economics leading the White House, but we don’t need four more years of disdain for knowledge there either. John McCain frequently brags about finishing near the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy, just as George W. Bush boasts about his “gentleman’s C’s” at Yale. Bush has gotten our country into an incredible mess both domestically and internationally with his attitude, and McCain’s equally stubborn and bellicose personality is tailor-made to dig us into an even deeper hole—hard as it might be to imagine a deeper hole.

Our country is sliding into recession, gasoline prices are at an all-time high, the credit and other financial markets have suffered a precedent-shattering meltdown, and we have done next to nothing to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. In the midst of this Republican-created mess, the GOP is now asking us to turn to a man who is trying to get ready for the job by reading snatches of Alan Greenspan’s memoirs between campaign stops? Give us a break!

If you’re not troubled enough by what you’ve heard so far about maconomics, consider these reassurances from McCain’s “friends” at the conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard: “McCain’s method in domestic matters no less than in foreign affairs is military: He surveys a set of facts, identifies a villain, fixes him with his steely gaze, and then goes after him.” [Ferguson, The McCain Economic “Team”, 02/25/2008.] Axis of Evil, please move over!!

Because of political imperatives that even someone who graduated near the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy can grasp, John McCain is desperately trying to put some daylight between himself and the failed Presidency of George W. Bush. But, buyer: beware. McCain’s rigid, uncompromising, stay the course personality will lead him into his own personal series of policy disasters just as surely as Bush’s personality did. And, McCain’s comments on the recent credit and mortgage crises are all focused on being sure we don’t do anything that might possibly interfere with the same unfettered and unregulated free market forces that got us into this mess in the first place.

As Democrats, we need to go all out this year to be sure that this aspiring economics student has all the time he needs after November 4 to fill in the gaps in his economic resume. Hint: Alan Greenspan may be free for lunch.

PETER ROUSSELOT