Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Politics, Thanks To Sarah Palin, Rises Out Of The Gutter

by tristero

There was a time when a Senator’s career and presidential aspirations were utterly destroyed because he was photographed with a bikini-clad young woman not his wife on his lap. There was a time when a popular president trying to kill bin Laden was accused of wagging the dog to distract attention from conservatives’ obsession with his leisure-time activities involving a young intern and a cigar. There was a time when politicians resigned in shame when they were caught soliciting sex from interns or in bathrooms or from hookers.

Those days are over, and we have Governor Sarah Palin to thank for it. It took a Republican to go to China. It took a Republican to nationalize insurance companies and the banks. And now, it’s taken a Republican to make the country ok with adulterous politicians.

Today, our politics is elevated. We are above such tawdry sensationalism, at least when it concerns Republican women, who remain virgins until they marry and then only fuck make love submit to their husbands for procreation.

Indeed, not a single blog I read regularly nor any mainstream news source has reported that the National Enquirer is so confident they would win a libel suit that they have named Sarah Palin’s alleged lover.

I don’t think I’ll mention it either.

The Bad Apples Were In The White House

by tristero

As if we didn’t know already:

Senior White House officials played a central role in deliberations in the spring of 2002 about whether the Central Intelligence Agency could legally use harsh interrogation techniques while questioning an operative of Al Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah, according to newly released documents.

In meetings during that period, the officials debated specific interrogation methods that the C.I.A. had proposed to use on Qaeda operatives held at secret C.I.A. prisons overseas, the documents show. The meetings were led by Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, and attended by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft and other top administration officials.

Apparently, Angler was there, too, but the Times doesn’t quite have the, eh, smoking shotgun to prove it:

Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, declined to comment on which officials attended the meetings in 2002. He said Vice President Dick Cheney often attended meetings of the National Security Council’s principals committee, a group of senior officials who advise the president on national security.

Short version: the president of the United States personally ordered that prisoners be tortured. The vice president of the United States figured out how.

Kind of makes one sick to the stomach.

Forking It Over

by dday

So President Power Of Nightmares came on the teevee tonight and spoke darkly of grave and imminent dangers to our financial system, all of them somehow magically divorced from his own laissez-faire policies, belief in deregulation and failure to respond to the very clear warnings that we were headed down a path of disaster.

President Bush on Wednesday warned Americans and lawmakers reluctant to pass a $700 billion financial rescue plan that failing to act fast risks wiping out retirement savings, rising foreclosures, lost jobs, closed businesses and even “a long and painful recession.”

His dire warning came not long after the president issued extraordinary invitations to presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, one of whom will inherit the mess in four months, as well as key congressional leaders to a White House meeting on Thursday to work on a compromise.

“Without immediate action by Congress, American could slip into a financial panic and a distressing scenario would unfold,” Bush said in a 12-minute prime-time address from the White House East Room that he hoped would help rescue his tough-sell bailout package.

Basically, gimme gimme gimme or the economy gets it. And while Bush appeared to accede to a lot of the steps sought by Congress – vague limits on executive compensation, some ability for taxpayers to cash in on the upside potential, and some manner of oversight – he drew the line at any re-regulation of the companies who got us into this mess, saying that it could “come later.” And indeed, most of the talk was about the failure of borrowers to pay their bills, not the predatory practices of lenders to shuttle people into loans without explaining the circumstances (and through yield spread premiums, actually getting bonuses for that).

After a couple days of seeing the Paulson plan go down in flames, I now have a very queasy feeling about this. Bush clearly intervened in a Presidential election by inviting McCain and Obama to the White House, and the joint statement released by the two of them is worthless, all “we must rise above partisanship and work together for the good of the country” gibberish. McCain apparently dropped the specifics from the statement. Now the House and the Senate are claiming a deal with President Paulson, and the draft that’s been floating around is not good. Ian Welsh calls it FISA all over again.

It’s essentially a Wall Street giveaway plan, with only some fig leaves to try and pretend that it isn’t.

Why? Because the language about taking warrants in exchange for buying up toxic assets is only for direct purchases and not for reverse auction puchases, which will be the majority of the purchases. As Soros points out, in any reverse auction, the government will get stuck with the most toxic of toxic waste because of information asymetries. In exchange they should at least get stock, equal not to what they paid, but to the face of the crap they are buying.

There is quite a bit of language about helping mortgage holders, but it is almost all qualified with words like encourage and request, rather than require. Since the Treasury is bailing mortgage holders out, the idea that the Secretary must “encourage” and “request” is just BS. The correct response is to make help for mortgage holders a requirement of participating in the program at all. If financial institutions don’t like that they don’t need to participate. Good way to make sure that companies that don’t really need help don’t swill at the trough.

Unlike the Dodd bill, this is not a copy of the actual language of the bill, but a summary gloss. Without seeing the language we don’t know what’s actually in there. Dodd was straight up with us. Frank is hiding his legislative language. Why?

The bill will allow bankruptcy judges to restructure mortgages for those having trouble paying, and that’s the bright spot. But in the end, this is a stick-up. A stick-up with a $700 billion dollar price tag that was literally invented out of thin air. Now, there’s one paragraph in The Hill piece that suggest this might go in stages:

Paulson said unemployment rates could approach 10 percent if the plan was not adopted, senators said, although he did indicate possible receptiveness to the idea of implementing it in stages. Such a plan, Paulson told senators, has worked in countries like Japan, where financial rescue plans were done in stages.

That’s really the only way out of this right now. That $700 billion dollar price tag defunds even the most mildly progressive agenda. I think John McCain may have lost the election today, and at the hands of David Letterman, no less. But with the federal treasury raided and in the hands of Wall Street corporations who made bad decisions, it’s hard to see how a President Obama can be anything but a fixer-upper and a caretaker. All because everyone bought the crisis frame so hard.

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More Village Follies

by digby

What can be done about Howard Fineman?

SHUSTER: Howard, it used to be that the mere mention of Vice President Cheney would be enough to quell a conservative rebellion, what‘s the story there?

FINEMAN: Well, David, as “Politico” was saying, you know, there was a revolt there today. They don‘t believe Dick Cheney anymore. He has used up a lot of credibility.

The Republicans are the ones who followed Dick Cheney over the edge of the cliff, in the view of many of them, privately, on the war in Iraq. He‘s the one who said that there was a slam dunk war to be won in Mesopotamia. And a lot of Republicans don‘t like it.

Also, the Bush-Cheney White House has been pretty cavalier in its attitude toward Congress, including, if not especially, Republicans in Congress. They basically ignored them.

And there are two other points, David. A lot of the young Republicans in Congress are populist Republicans; they‘re not Wall Street Republicans. They‘re not old-fashioned Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger politicians who care about Wall Street, number one.

And number two, they‘re all people who don‘t like the idea of big government and they‘re aware of the fact that both because of the war in Iraq, the passage of the Patriot Act, and now these big bailouts, the Bush administration has presided over the biggest expansion of federal power since the new deal and these Republicans that I mentioned don‘t like it and they blame Cheney for it.

How fascinating. if this is true then they really are the Eunuch Caucus because they didn’t breath a word about it when Bush was riding high. In fact, they cheered him all the way down the line and told anyone who disagreed to STFU.

This is blatant nonsense. Fineman is helping the Republicans avoid responsibility for what they’ve done by saying that the “real Conservatives” (like John McCain, by the way) were against all those icky “liberal” Bush and Cheney initiatives which they shoved down the throats of the Democrats and told them to like it. That’s rewriting history. There haven’t been any “Rockefeller Republicans” around since 1994. And every one of these Gingrich revolutionaries have been spouting the free market catechism on a loop.

But that’s not the end of his perfidious blather:

SHUSTER: Now, as far as the Democratic side of the aisle is concerned, is this the Democrats‘ chance to veto the kind of blank check authority that they gave the Bush administration on the Iraq war, something that Congress could never dial back again. I mean, does it look as if they might have learned their lesson?

FINEMAN: Well, I think that‘s the sentiment among many of the ones that I have talked to. But I think it‘s the wrong sentiment. I mean, they can‘t be fighting the last war here. Ironically, they should have had the backbone back then to oppose the war.

Now, if they decide they‘re going to scuttle any bailout bill just to teach Bush a lesson, I think, they‘ll be making a big mistake. And I think, at the end, that‘s not what‘s going to motivate them.

I think they want to do something here, David. But, I think, they want the protections for homeowners, they want to clamping down on the CEOs of the big banks and the financial institutions. They want the oversight. They probably won‘t get the equity stake they‘re talking about, I think Paulson will draw the line there but they‘re going to insist on a lot of these things before they weight this thing on through.

So if the Dems oppose this bill is payback for Bush. In fact, the only thing they are allowed to do is agree to what Paulson has already said he would do.

This is your Village in action. The only possible outcome is for everyone to agree to what King Henry wants. But the newly minted “populist” Republicans will be able to run as principled fiscal conservatives because everyone knows they have always hated Big government and disagreed with Dick Cheney’s approach from the beginning. The Democrats, however, need to roll over or risk being seen as petty obstructionists who are willing to take down the country for simple revenge.

The villagers are already disappearing the Bush administration and laying the groundwork for a “revival” of “real” conservatism.

I’ll say it again. These people are at the center of America’s political crisis.

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Obama’s Response To Immaturity

by tristero

Apparently, John McCain thinks that the overwhelmingly important task of campaigning and electing a president is some kind of vacation that can be suspended when something he thinks is more important comes along. Apparently, John McCain can’t deal with multiple critical situations at the same time. Apparently, John McCain, behind in the polls, is afraid to be seen together with Obama discussing another set of serious crises facing this country: the foreign policy disasters he aided and abetted George W. Bush in creating.

Once again Bush’s administration, which John McCain has supported 90% of the time, has failed to address a serious problem in a serious fashion – Secretary Paulson’s initial, thoroughly dictatorial, proposal was so absurd that hardly any real experts on the economy supported it. And we, the American people, are expected to pick up the pieces. Well, we shall. But there is no reason to panic, as McCain clearly has. And there is no reason to drop everything in order for either presidential candidate to contribute effectively to appropriate legislation. As Obama mentioned, he is in constant contact with all the major players in the financial crisis legislation. According to Charles Schumer, that has not been the case with McCain. [UPDATE: Chris Dodd, too]

The McCain campaign’s behavior is worse than a cheap stunt; it’s seriously panicky behavior, the last thing this country needs from its leaders.

Obama was exactly right not to suspend his campaign, and not only because it is a calm, reasoned response to a crisis. It is as vitally important to this country’s future to choose a president who will genuinely change the failed policies of the Bush/McCain era as it is to work on a practical proposal to address the fiscal crisis caused by so many personal friends of the Bush administration, and of John McCain. McCain, apparently, has as much ability to use a phone as he does email. Someone should tell McCain that with modern technology, both he and Obama can help shape this legislation without overreacting or suspending the campaign for presidency.

A president must be a leader who can juggle many balls in the air at the same time. John McCain believes one is too much and so he panicked. A person so limited in his capacity to face multiple emergencies as McCain has shown himself to be clearly is not qualified to be president.

In regards to the debate, I am glad that Obama felt it important to say we should hold to the schedule. (And it is only fair to Oxford, Miss. which would take a $5.5 million loss if McCain chickens out.) This is a vital discussion and the country must have the chance to hear the candidates. As others have mentioned, the debate should be expanded to include both foreign policy and the economy.

One final point. Apparently, the McCain campaign is in a money crunch, the only rational reason for suspending campaign ads to take advantage of free publicity from the stunt. Obama, therefore, should swamp the airwaves with ads.

Good. God.

by dday

I don’t know what to say.

Transcript with full context.

COURIC: You’ve said, quote, “John McCain will reform the way Wall Street does business.” Other than supporting stricter regulations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years ago, can you give us any more example of his leading the charge for more oversight?

PALIN: I think that the example that you just cited, with his warnings two years ago about Fannie and Freddie–that, that’s paramount. That’s more than a heck of a lot of other senators and representatives did for us.

COURIC: But he’s been in Congress for 26 years. He’s been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation, not more.

PALIN: He’s also known as the maverick though. Taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he’s been talking about–the need to reform government.

COURIC: I’m just going to ask you one more time, not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?

PALIN: I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring them to you.

I think the wrong candidate decided to suspend their campaign. No wonder they’re trying to spike the VP debate.

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Howling Wolves

by digby

I don’t know what Bush is going to say tonight. But I think it’s fairly clear he’s going to try to fearmonger the public into some kind of panic just. It’s what he has been doing since the day after the election in 2000, when they created the false meme that the country was going to fall apart if the decision wasn’t made immediately. It’s what they did with Iraq and the mushroom clouds. I just heard Huckleberry Graham say that this crisis could be a “financial Pearl Harbor.” And here’s a sample of the kinds of things Bush has been saying so far:

Further stress on our financial markets would cause massive job losses, devastate retirement accounts, further erode housing values,…

Not all presidents speak in these kinds of apocalyptic terms. In fact, perhaps now is a good time to read Franklin Roosevelt’s inaugural address, best remembered for the phrase, “we have nothing to fear but fear itself”:

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.

Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.

Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.

There are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the several States.

Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.

The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all parts of the United States—a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that the recovery will endure.

In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.

With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.

Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.

It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of the national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.

We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come.

On the other hand, maybe screaming “the sky is falling, run for your lives” over and over again is just as good. Certainly, it’s all we’ve been hearing for eight long years.

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Stupid Evil People

by digby

For anyone who’s looking for a nice, easy to read primer on the basics of the financial meltdown, I would recommend this post called Economic Disaster and Stupid Evil People. It is pretty long, but this is the nut:

1. People like buying safe investments.

2. Historically, mortgages are very safe investments: people will go to incredible lengths not to lose their homes.

3. Banks realized that they could make lots of money by taking groups of mortgages, and turning them into bonds that they could sell, earning a commission, and passing the risk to whoever bought the bonds.

4. These bonds became incredibly popular. Lots and lots of people and organizations wanted to buy them.

5. There aren’t enough good mortgages to put together the number of bonds that people wanted to buy.

6. So banks started giving out mortgages to people who couldn’t repay them, using elaborate and dishonest schemes to pretend that they were actually not bad mortgages.

7. The people who got mortgages that they couldn’t repay didn’t repay them.

8. The banks act surprised: “My god, no one could have predicted that so many loans would default! Whine, whinge, moan, someone come help us!

What’s going on now is directly related to that mortgage mess. A good metaphor for it is that the current situation is like a huge city of skyscrapers built on a foundation of sand; the mortgages are the sand.

What we’ve been seeing over the last couple of weeks is the same basic scam as the mortgage mess, but on an even larger scale. Lending money is a profitable business. Bundling loans into investment vehicles is an incredibly profitable business for producing what appear to be high-yield, low-risk investments.

Naturally, when there’s a big opportunity to make lots of money, there’s a ton of people looking to get in on it. Of course, just like with the mortgages, there’s a limit. Realistically, there’s only a certain amount of money that can be loaned at any time to people who can pay it back. But there was so much money to be made that as the high-quality loans ran out, they started looking for other things that they could wrap up as investments. Of course, since people who buy these kinds of investments are typically looking for something really safe, that means that they can’t just give money out any-which-way; they need to have some plausible way of saying “This is really safe”.

And here’s where the stupidity really started kicking in.

How do you take a bunch of loans that might not be repaid, and turn them into something that’s safe? Well, what do you do if you had a lot of money tied up in a piece of property that you could lose in an accident? Like, say, a car or a house? You’d buy insurance!

Read on for the amazing next steps…

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Now She Tells Us

by digby

I’ve been listening to Doris Kearns Goodwin drone on and on for the past year about how the country desperately needs bipartisanship and flogging her book “Team of Rivals” as a blueprint for proper governance. (Obama mentioned he read the thing and everyone assumed that meant he was going to appoint a bipartisan cabinet.) Underlying this whole line of argument is the notion that the ideological differences between the parties are somehow insubstantial and that consensus can be achieved if everyone would just “work together” and stop being so difficult.

Here’s what Kearns Goodwin wrote just a couple of months ago in the NY Times:

Polls show that Americans wish to move beyond the combination of extreme partisanship and ideological rigidity that has for decades prevented Washington from addressing the serious problems facing our country. They have seen the damage caused by the creation of like-minded “echo chambers” in Washington. Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain would do well to keep this in mind as they choose their vice president and cabinet members.

Here she is yesterday on David Gregory’s show:

GREGORY: I want to talk a little about FDR. The comparison has been made more than once now that there has not been this kind of financial crisis since the presidential race of 1932. It is interesting, if you look at his inaugural address, FDR said the following—I want to put it on the screen for our viewers to see: “practices of the unscrupulous money changers”—he‘s talking about the throes of the Great Depression, of course—“stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision. When there is no vision, the people perish.”

Eerie similarities in language to the current crisis. This question comes out of this, which is: what kind of vision does a president need faced with a crisis like this?

GOODWIN: What FDR showed was I think two things. That part you just read showed that he understood that it was us versus them, that the people themselves had feared at the time of that crisis that maybe they were responsible for what had happened. They couldn‘t understand what had been going on. So he is saying, no, it is not you. It is them. It‘s this few people over there. And if you band together with me, if you have confidence in leadership and confidence in yourself, then, of course, the fame words, “the only thing to fear is fear itself.”

He was able to project his confidence on to the people. The incredible thing is think about what his theme song was in the midst of a much worse economic crisis, “Happy Days Are Here Again.” He made people feel that the future would be better than the present. That‘s what these two candidates have got to do. Not just talk about the misery, but make people believe their leadership will make things better for them.

GREGORY: What is the difference? Do you see some fundamental difference in the country, in the leadership now?

GOODWIN: The interesting thing is that both candidates are trying to be above partisanship in a certain sense. McCain is obviously trying to run away from the Republican problems of these last years. And Obama has been trying to be a post-partisan candidate. When in a certain case, what FDR did was to say this isn‘t just an election between two men. It is between two doctrines. He laid out the difference between the Republican and the Democratic party, one concerned about government favoring the few and the other one wanting the masses to be sound and that would help the country.

It seems to me Obama is missing a chance. I‘ve thought that all along. My husband is arguing that all along, as an old Democrat. To not argue about the doctrine of the Democratic party. Yes, he wants independents. Yes, he wants to be post-partisan after wins. But right now is the time when the Republican-Democratic brand is so contrasting and I think he has desired to not be in that fight. It‘s not helping him in a certain sense.

This makes me want to put my foot through the television. Kearns Goodwin has been “advising” anyone who would listen for the past year that Americans are demanding bipartisanship and practical comity. Now she says that Obama has been on the wrong track by running as a post-partisan pragmatist and should have been selling the Democratic brand with sharp contrasts.

Luckily, it appears that the American people instinctively get that when one crew has screwed something up so horribly, it’s probably a good idea to relieve them of their duties. But that understanding will be in spite of Doris Kearns Goodwin and the rest of the Village Elders who have been telling the country for months that drawing such contrasts is unseemly and that making an ideological argument is boorish and ill-mannered. It was all about “process, process, process” for months — don’t make trouble. Needless to say, none of them were giving similar lectures during the years of thuggish Republican dominance.

Kearns Goodwin’s observations were good ones. But sadly, they would have been much more meaningful if, instead of passing out endless mushy bromides about bipartisanship for the past year, she would have said it from the beginning.

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Crisis Manager

by dday

Reuters reports and the teevee tells me that John McCain is suspending his campaign and heading to Washington to work on the bailout bill. He also wants Friday night’s debate cancelled.

Strong, stately General Patton John McCain is dashing into Washington to make everything all better. I expect the pundit swoon any second now.

John McCain sure is managing a crisis, all right. Only the crisis is his failing campaign, and this is his brain trust’s big plan to fix it.

Update: by digby —

I actually think this is pretty savvy. He doesn’t want to give the country a chance to see the two of them together right now and make the logical comparisons. He also wants to show that he can “take charge” in a crisis and the optics of this are that he’s rushing back to to Washington to knock some heads together.

But, this is the second time in a month that McCain has grandstanded like this. First it was “suspending” the convention because of the hurricane and now this. At some point, someone should point out that leadership requires something more than canceling events and posturing for the cameras.

I would love to see Obama say that he agrees to go back to Washington and hold the debate on the floor of the senate — about the economy.

… (by dday) Is the plan for McCain to go to Capitol Hill and tell them to “cut the bullshit”? And get this, Obama called McCain this morning to issue a joint statement on conditions for the bailout. McCain agreed to it, then pulled this stunt. Obama’s about to speak in a minute…

…It’s also interesting that this happened moments after CBS News released a piece of their interview with Sarah Palin today, where she intimated that the country is headed for a Great Depression if we don’t fast-track the bailout. This’ll take the edge off of that.

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