McCain Needs Real Economic Plan
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Economy, McCain, Palin, RomneyI’m getting the sense that John McCain wasn’t really joking when he said he doesn’t know much about the economy.
In the last few days, as bad financial news has piled up, McCain has seemed more than just unfocused, he’s seemed clueless. I’ll let the Wall Street Journal lay out the problem:
Flip-flopping between assertions that the economy is fundamentally strong and populist promises to rip apart its financial plumbing creates confusion about what exactly Mr. McCain really thinks.
…
The problem with Senator McCain’s blustery Wall Street broadsides is that they don’t offer an explanation for what is happening. How is it supposed to reassure people to hear Mr. McCain intone, as he did yesterday, the words “derivatives” and “credit default swaps” as if it’s the first time he’d ever heard of them?
McCain is completely lacking a narrative. Barack Obama, on the other hand, is cruising along on the usual liberal canards of blaming the conservatives and punishing the rich. That may not be a real solution but it is a solid narrative that plays well in an election.
I can’t help but think, had McCain chosen someone like Mitt Romney as his running mate, he’d have someone out on the trail delivering a coherent economic message. For all the enthusiasm Sarah Palin has brought to the party, her deficiencies are already becoming apparent. She’s helped McCain close the excitement gap but she’s does done nothing to shore up his policy weaknesses.
McCain needs to get his economic ideas in order before the debates. Without a clear conservative narrative, McCain will let Obama win with a simplistic liberal one.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Economy, McCain, Palin, Romney. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 17th, 2008 at 7:16 am
What do you mean no narrative…..surge, POW, Iraq, bad liberals, Imma Maverick, Sarah Palin is a reformer!
That will fix the economy
September 17th, 2008 at 7:51 am
McCain doesn’t just need an economic plan, he needs economic advisers. His current list of supply-side hacks (who call themselves economists) and Fiorina (cough cough, CEO who crashed a company and took a big pay-off) is embarrassing. Is this the group of people he is really going to run the country with? (you can add scary right after embarrassing)
Also, Obama’s narrative, as I have stated in other comments, is not a liberal stunt. It addresses to REAL issues with the economy, crowding out due to government deficits and low demand. Unlike McCain’s advisers, Obama’s advisers happen to be well-respected and mostly centrists (Jason Furman, Larry Summers, Goolsby). Though I grant some of them are liberal (Brad DeLong), at least they are respected liberal economists.
September 17th, 2008 at 9:02 am
I’d also like to point out that Obama was discussing the problems in the subprime sector and working on legislation to stop fraudulent securitization practices at least as far back as February. As far as I can tell, this has been a surprise to Mccain, who’s been saying until yesterday afternoon that the fundamentals are strong and we need less regulation.
September 17th, 2008 at 10:44 am
The first thing McCain should do is point out that he saw this financial crisis coming back in 2005, and co-sponsored the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, which never passed because it was blocked by Democrats and a few Republican crossovers. McCain said this in front of congress in May 2006:
Here is the proposed bill. It would have done the following:
I’m waiting for McCain to bring this up, and the reasons why the Democrats opposed it. Perhaps because Chris Dodd, then the ranking member of the Banking Committee and now its chair, was in the middle of receiving preferential loan treatment from Countrywide, and Barack Obama was getting paid huge sums by lobbyists for Fannie and Freddy?
McCain is set up to hit a home run on this issue, he just needs to be more assertive and bring up his own record.
September 17th, 2008 at 10:57 am
I don’t really want either candidate to come up with an economic plan. It will just be wasted paper and time.
Seriously, with a 9.4 trillion dollar debt, what idiot includes a plan to cut taxes as his solution to our “economic” crisis?
I know of only one, and he won’t be president for much longer. And now these two clowns want to do the same thing?
They are either lying, or complete idiots. Or, both are really George Bush wearing skin suits.
September 21st, 2008 at 7:40 pm
McCain Needs Real Economic Plan…
Asserts Alan Stewart Carl, a moderate blogger: “I?m getting the sense that John McCain wasn?t really joking when he said he doesn?t know much about the economy. In the last few days, as bad financial news has piled up, McCain has seemed more than j…