In keeping with my policy of not writing much of anything — columns, e-mails, what have you — without offering it in some way for discussion on the blog, here’s the editorial I wrote for today’s paper on what The Wall Street Journal termed "The Beltway Crash." Actually, tell you what — I’ll give you the Director’s Cut version, before I had to eliminate two inches because we had TWO subjects worthy of lead-editorial status on the page (the other was about homelessness in Columbia). Anyway, here’s a link to the published version, and here’s the longer one:
In time of crisis,
our leaders fail us
ON MONDAY, WE SAW that our nation is suffering from a shortage more profound than the looming collapse of credit — a leadership deficit.
The president can’t lead, and it seems painfully obvious that he knows it. His brief televised comments to the nation have been startlingly unconvincing.
As for Congress — after “leaders” worked across party lines for several days, we were treated to appallingly petty displays of partisanship before, during and after the 228-205 vote against the rescue plan.
That was a clarifying moment. While sincere people had valid objections to the plan originally put forward by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and there was much to object to in the amended plan the negotiators had come up with, its rejection on Monday helped crystallize the fact that however flawed it was, there was one option that was worse: not passing it.
Consider the excuses offered:
- Republicans, two-thirds of whom voted “no,” pointed to an offensively partisan speech given by Speaker Nancy Pelosi just before the vote. Yes, the speech was abominable. That she would speak as she did at such a moment should cause the House to seek a new speaker after this crisis is over. But was that an excuse for anyone to vote against the bill? Absolutely not. Either the plan was the right thing for the country or not, no matter what she said.
- Members of both parties, their eyes on re-election just over a month away, heard the voters didn’t like the plan. Well, nobody likes the plan. But this was what negotiators had come up with, and there was bipartisan agreement that this plan or one very like it needed to pass quickly to prevent the nation’s financial infrastructure from a profound collapse — one that would hurt everyone, from Wall Street to Main Street. Such situations illustrate why we have a representative system of government. We elect people to study an issue far more deeply than the voters can and make a wise decision. Our system failed on Monday.
- The explanations of Rep. Gresham Barrett, the only member of the S.C. delegation to vote “no,” were empty. He said he wants to let markets work. Markets showed what they thought of that after his position prevailed. He then offered a cut in the capital gains tax — a fine idea perhaps, but one that in this context sounded like he had reached blindfolded into a bag of cliches and pulled out the first thing he touched.
What now? Well, House leaders of both parties need to scramble over the Rosh Hashanah break to line up the votes they failed to corral on Monday.
But that won’t address the leadership deficit.
Whatever happens the next few days, either John McCain or Barack Obama will be elected president on Nov. 4, and the nation will turn to the winner for what is missing now. Sen. McCain took a bold shot at leadership last week, but fell flat. Sen. Obama had played it cool, but on Tuesday stepped up to back the need for a rescue unequivocally.
These men have the nation’s attention. How they use that to address the nation’s leadership void in the coming days will decide more than the presidential election.
In fact, as long as I’m giving you more windows into the process than you want, here’s the very, very rough, stream-of-consciousness first draft of the column, before I even corrected typos or started organizing it so that someone else could make sense of it:
Who is leading the nation in this time of economic crisis? No one,
and that is what is most appalling about the House vote on the bailout
plan, and its aftermath.
The president can’t lead, and it seems
painfully obvious that he knows it. His brief televised comments to the
nation, during prime time last night and then again on Tuesday morning
after the House vote and the stock market freefall, are startling
unconvincing. Mr. Bush doesn’t even seem convinced himself.
The
failure of congressional leadership is particularly stark. After
“leaders” worked across party lines for several days, we were treated
to petty displays of childish partisanship before, during and after the
228-205 vote against the plan.
That was a clarifying moment. While
serious, sincere people had valid objections to the plan originally put
forward by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and there was much to
object to in the amended plan the negotiators had come up with, it’s
rejection on Monday helped crystallize that however flawed, however
painful, however ugly the result was, there was one option that was
worse: not passing it.
The excuses offered for why the bill failed were utterly unconvincing:
n
Republicans, who have the most to answer for since two-thirds of them
voted “no,” have pointed collectively to an offensively partisan speech
given by Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the moments before the vote. And true,
the speech was abominable, pure hyperpartisan boilerplate. That she
would speak as she did at such a moment should cause both parties to be
in the search for a new speaker after this particular crisis is over.
But was that an excuse for anyone to vote against the bill? Absolutely
not. Either the plan was the right thing for the country or not, no
matter what Ms. Pelosi said.
n Members of both parties, their
eyes on re-election just over a month away, voted “no” because they
were hearing that the voters didn’t like the plan. Well, nobody likes
the plan. But this was the plan negotiators had come up with over the
last two weeks, and there was bipartisan agreement that this plan or
one very like it needed to pass quickly to prevent the nation’s
financial infrastructure from a profound collapse – one that would hurt
everyone, from Wall Street to Main Street, to invoke a populist
buzzphrase of the moment. This situation is a dramatic demonstration of
just why we have a representative system of government rather than a
pure democracy. We elect people to study an issue far more deeply than
the voters can and make a wise decision. In every case where a member
voted according to the polls Monday, that system failed.
n The
ideological objections were especially empty. For that we have a poster
child, Rep. Gresham Barrett, the only member of the South Carolina
delegation to vote “no.” He says he wants to let markets work. Well,
they “worked” on Monday after his position prevailed in the House, with
the Dow suffering its largest one-day point drop in history. He then
offers as a solution a cut in the capital gains tax, which sounds for
all the world like reaching blindfolded into a bag of political cliches
and pulling out the first thing his fingers encountered.
What now?
Well, House leaders of both parties need to scramble over the Rosh
Hashanah break to line up the votes they failed to corral on Monday.
But
that won’t address the leadership deficit. Whatever happens the next
few days, either John McCain or Barack Obama will be elected president
on Nov. 4, and the nation will turn to the winner for what is missing
now. Unfortunately, neither has distinquished himself on this issue.
Sen. McCain has run about trying to forge a passable agreement without
success, then blamed Democrats for the failure. Sen. Obama has kept his
cool, but excessively so; he has not risked his campaign on the passage
of the plan.
There is something that these candidates can do that no
one else can. They have the nation’s attention. They should use it to
explain, together, what they agree upon – that this plan should pass.
If either one believes otherwise, he should explain why, offer his
alternative, and unequivocally stand behind it. In other words, they
should lead. Because no one else is doing so.
This is fairly typical of my writing process — first I overwrite, and then pare. What was unusual was that the concluding paragraph kept changing. Usually, I have a pretty good idea of what I want to say at the end, and sometimes even write that first. In this case, the thing that I wanted to make sure to do in the editorial was to express disgust with the failure of Congress, and describe the leadership vacuum. In our morning meeting we had spoken about adding the thought that this was a vacuum that McCain and Obama needed to step into more effectively than they had so far, but we had left it sor of fuzzy as to how we wanted to put that. (That’s unusual. More often, although certainly not always, we get into specific wording in our board discussions.) So I experimented with a couple or three different ways of saying it, complicated by the fact that Obama gave an important speech on the subject even as I was writing.
I know that’s way, way more than you wanted to know, but that’s part of what the blog’s for.
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Brad,
While I agree that there is a huge leadership crisis, I think this is a rare instance of politicians listening to their constituents. Both sides of the aisle did, and I applaud them for it.
Both candidates missed a chance to say “I’m against this bailout” and clinch the election.
It’s pretty clear now that the first draft of the bailout plan as put forth so stridently by Secretary Paulson and the President was a complete dog. In spite of the hysteria by the administration all sides agreed this was not a plan we had to pass. And nothing terrible happened.
The plan that failed Monday was better but still wanting in a number of areas. Notwithstanding the sharp increase in some key interest rates the overall market situation seems calm. The DOW is not collapsing. Oil prices are holding steady at around $100 a barrel. There is time to work out a good plan that won’t give away the store just to keep a few ultra rich/ultra greedy bankers a break. The president’s credibility is completely gone at this point. No one on either side of the aisle trusts him. His legacy of haplessness is secure.
We elect representatives to make the correct decisions and not the most popular at the time. Brad, I commend you for pointing this out. The electorate has limited knowledge of the issue and was relying on the media and two minute sound bites for education. Our leaders in DC did little to explain the plan to “Main Street” and the consequences of action and inaction. This isn’t a bailout; it is a loan with oversight and regulation. Mr. President, Mdm. Speaker, it was your responsibility.
I am also in agreement that Pelosi’s speech was inappropriate for the circumstances. And anyone that used that as an excuse is sophomoric and has no business in government. At a time we needed courage, we got partisan politics and grandstanding.
Once the election has occurred, both parties should address their leadership void and inadequacies. Civility,respect and looking an adversary in the eye are the traits of strong leaders. We must demand these from our next generation of leaders.
It is a cover up of a massive bank robbery by Democrats, from the unqualified minority home buyers, right up to the Democrats who looted FNMA and FMAC for huge bonuses based on fraudulent annual reports.
Here’s the Rovian analysis – a Failure of Leadership. Heck, if the leadership is handing out passes, it can’t be serious.
You know, bud, I have to hand it to you. You have a bottomless pool of talent for blaming the shortcomings of Democrats on whatever Republican suits your moment.
What bill did your party sponsor to keep this mess from happening?
And what do you mean, nothing terrible happened? Every day that passes without credit channels regaining circulation will bring the failure of more businesses, more unemployment, more economic stagnation.
This is not about bailing out rich bankers, for God’s sake. It’s about restoring circulation to the arteries and veins of our economy.
It’s not about class warfare. It’s about continuing the borrow-sell-repay cycle.
It’s not about the stinking election. It’s about America’s lifeblood.
This bill should have only contained the bare minimum to stabilize the mortgage markets, nothing more.
The rest could be dealt with later, if needed.
Instead, we got a huge pork bill and a cover up of bank fraud by Democrats.
The admininstration has lied repeatidly to us before, (the WMD claims about Iraq come to mind), that I don’t buy the Bush gloom and doom mantra any more. Maybe we should scale back on consumer and small business borrowing and try more of a pay as you go economy. We’re living way beyond our means and it’s finally caught with us. If we pass the bailout and incur enormous debt won’t we have major side effects to deal with? Call me a cynic but I’ve heard it all before.
Pay as you go was Jimmy Carter’s idea, bud. And it’s a fine idea, if you’re willing to go through a decade or two of depression so the cash economy can catch up with the down-payment economy that preceded it.
Take my word for it, bud. Thirteen-percent interest rates under Jimmy Carter made selling houses hard.
Yep. The ‘Buy My Pile’ website got vulgar. It was fun while it was sorta G-rated. Perhaps I shall volunteer as moderator/buzzkiller.
….it’s another slow day counting the bean.
Maybe we should scale back on small business borrowing?
What do you mean, “WE”, bud?
You are not in business; you work for the DOT.
This crisis wasn’t caused by small businesses or by President Bush. It was caused by Democrats stealing tax money to hand out to unqualified blacks and Latinos, while their political appointees running the programs were falsifying the books, and collecting $400,000,000 in bonuses.
The stock market reacted to the Senate’s attempt to add $800 BILLION to the national debt, by selling off the Dow.
p.m. I’m old enough to remember the 13% interest rates. That’s the hard medicine that cured the stagflation cycle created by the economic mismanagment of the Nixon/Ford years. It took a while and we ultimately suffered through the worst recession since WW II but in the end prosperity again reigned during the Reagan years. Then, thanks to the Reagan/Bush excesses we started down the path of recession yet again. Then Clinton fixed that mess. And now we have another Republican recession with the president begging for money to bail out Wall Street. Don’t people ever learn. The GOP just can’t handle economic policy. All they know how to do is borrow and spend, mostly on worthless military nonsense.
You’re fabricating history again, bud.
Carter had “stagflation” of very low economic growth with hyperinflation.
Carter left office with money market funds paying 21%. It was Reagan who got inflation under control, with income tax reductions which the liberal brainiacs said would cause more inflation.
We in the private sector pay more attention to these things as they happen, than do bureaucrats.
Clinton rode the Reagan Boom and then killed it with tax increases on the middle class, leaving us with a recession in 2000.
bud, thanks for sticking up for my man Jimmy, although don’t you want to give poor ol’ Jerry Ford a little credit for his WIN (Whip Inflation Now) buttons? He was giving it the ol’ college try….
It only took Reagan a few months to clean up 4 years of Jimmy Carter mess. That’s leadership.