You're Doing a Helleva Job, Bushie

In his presidential address to the nation last night, President Bush declared, “Our entire economy is in danger.” CNN’s Anderson Cooper showed a string of video clips of Bush proclaiming the fundamentals of the U.S. economy “solid” and “efficient,” the earliest from last December, the last from mid-July. It may have been corporate suits lending out money they didn’t have to people that couldn’t pay it back, but it was President Bush who sat in the Oval Office, blissfully unaware of the coming storm.

Or knowing and complicit; I can’t contemplate that right now.

The President needed to make that appearance last night, but he is the lamest of ducks, has been for at least the last few months. I can hear Bush quacking all the way here in Houston. It really isn’t all that important what Bush has to say on this matter because he won’t be the one that cleans up the mess.

That privilege will go to McCain or Obama. Why either man still wants to be president, I can’t fathom. In any case, what they say and think has become of paramount importance. It bodes well that both candidates will meet with Bush today. It’s so vitally important that McCain and Obama be at the cutting edge of this issue, otherwise I would think it nigh impossible to not only talk intelligently about the crisis but also formulate a solution for it.

It bodes less well that McCain wants to cancel Friday’s presidential debate so that he can rush to Washington and work on the bail-out bill. On the surface it might seem like he’s behaving responsibly, seeking to work and vote on what will likely turn out to be the most important piece of legislation since World War II. But everything these candidates do is orchestrated. And the fact that McCain wants to switch Friday’s debate with the next vice-presidential debates makes me think his campaign is politicizing the issue and seeking yet another avenue to keep Palin off the national stage. This is the kind of nonsense that keeps Washington gridlocked. If either candidate tries to maneuver this issue for their own political gain, they’ll be juggling mason jars of nitroglycerin. And they will deserve to have it blow up in their face and lose the election.

I am heartened that Congress did not blindly approve the three page, $700 billion proposal constructed by Henry Paulsen and put forth by President Bush. The counter-proposals I’ve heard and read about seem reasonable, but mostly unpalatable to Wall Street. One condition suggests that the $700 billion be parceled out over a long span of time. That seems perfectly reasonable. Another condition would give the U.S. government equity share of the bad loans it will assume. People blanche at this, whispering, “My God man, but that’s communism!” News flash here: a $700 billion bailout isn’t exactly the hallmark of free market capitalism. It’s funny how Wall Street can so pathetically beg for a bailout but turn their nose at the American taxpayer potentially making some money out of this lousy deal.

Their hubris, their balls of steel never cease to amaze me.

I’m also hearing a rising clamor for the end of “golden parachutes.” Hear, hear. If a bailout bill passes Congress, it must have provisions in place that guarantee no one in a failing bank profits from the government intervention. If I even get a whiff that some CEO will walk from away from this a bigger millionaire, I’m grabbing my torch and pitchfork and marching on their goddamn mansion. It would be the very definition of injustice for anyone involved in this meltdown of epic proportions to profit from this in any way, shape, or form.

It’s high time the American people put the fear of God in an aristocracy that has lost its way, destroyed our economy, and threatened our very national security. It’s well past the time that Americans gave the elite, the privileged a stiff reminder of where political and economic power really lies:

With you and me.