October 10, 2008

President Bush took to the Rose Garden again this morning in an attempt to dispel the sense of impending dread taking root in the hearts of his fellow citizens. That’s what a president should do, but if you’re a working stiff without a pension (which, unless you are a government employee, is most of us), this financial crisis is getting serious. If you’ve been counting on living out your sunset years on the strength of your monthly Social Security checks along with whatever you’ve been able to salt away in your 401-K retirement accounts, guess what? It’s 2003 all over again. Yes, in nine days of trading on Wall Street, you’ve lost something like five years of savings. Americans are starting to wonder if they’ll ever get that money back, and the whole mess is altering the 2008 presidential race.

 

It’s also beginning to dawn on Barack Obama and John McCain that the next president will inherit a real problem, if not an actual recession. Neither man has deigned to alter their budget plans or policy prescriptions in the slightest—time enough to do that after November 4, one supposes—but they are reacting to the crisis in politically different ways. Obama, ever the Cool Cat, is mainly trying to project a calming persona. The thinking in the Obama camp is that if this is a real crisis, voters certainly want an unflappable leader. McCain, by contrast, has responded by ratcheting up his denigration of Obama’s training and experience—and some of his Chicago associations—all by way of portraying the young Democrat as unready to take the helm.

 

Columnist E.J. Dionne has characterized this as the distinction between “Hope” and “Fear.” E.J. is a liberal, and a reliable Democrat on such matters, but he’s onto something. (His column goes a little too far when he starts comparing Obama to Franklin Roosevelt, and McCain to Herbert Hoover—but it is Hoover he’s being unfair to, not McCain. Hoover, like George W. Bush in 2008, tried to be a soothing presence in 1932, not a blistering one.) In any event, Obama’s appeal has always been based on a leap of faith, and he has embraced that dynamic as part of the package he’s offering voters. A cynic might say that it’s our leap, and his faith, but the confidence of the young senator from Chicago seems real enough, and he has rarely acted defensive about his thin résumé. So with Obama, you’re seeing what you get, and maybe getting more than you see.

 

McCain, meanwhile, is in a different place, and not only because this is a tough environment for Republicans. When McCain ran for president in 2000, he was the aspirational candidate, and on the 2008 campaign trail, he frequently describes himself as a Reagan disciple. Yet Ronald Reagan rarely sounded irritated, let alone angry, while running for office. In normal times, Americans tend to prefer hope over fear. In bad times, too.

 

 

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Comments On This Post
By fuzzyboy, 10/10/2008, 3:05 PM EDT
 

Every presidential candidate is a leap of faith. That may be a good thing. I suspect that Obama & McCain aren't altering their plans because they realize it may be better to under-react to this. Abandon some hope? Not this week. Also, they need to talk about their hopes and dreams for the nation and it's hard to create a vision based on things that may never get done.

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