Wow.
It's too early to say how this will play out for McCain and Obama. Let's take a moment instead to observe the size and shape of this. The failure of this deal represents a full-scale collapse in confidence in politicians and political authority. Here is Time's Michael Scherer:
Nearly every major political leader in America supported the bailout
bill. The President of the United States. The Vice President. The
Treasury Secretary. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve. The Chairman
of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Democratic and
Republican nominees for president. The Democratic and Republican
leadership of the House and the Senate. All of them said the same
thing. Vote yes.
But enough voters had no faith in these leaders and the solution they recommended that enough congressmen voted No to bring it down (the naysayers were largely those facing tight reelection races). Now, voters everywhere are staring, aghast, at an almighty mess that the politicians are making worse, not better. Who will lead the way out of it? The president is a virtual irrelevance. The two men who hope to succeed him can only stand on the sidelines. Democrats and Republicans on the Hill are busily engaged in a blame-assigning catfight.
Confidence in the political system was already at an all-time low. It just got a lot lower.
Comments