I posted the following on my.barackobama.com blog yesterday evening and decided to post it here with some additional comments.
The brilliance of Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Frank and their Democratic colleagues
Given the exceptional knowledge of detail that many, if not most of those reading this post have. I’m going to present it in outline form.
Imagine you are suddenly thrust into an entirely public, search lights full blast, blaring audio, moment in which you are told that unless you act the global economy collapses and America is the cause. Imagine some thug from Goldman Sachs shoves a terse document in your face and says ‘do this or the 2008 version of the great depression will happen and you caused it.’
Imagine millions of Americans are suddenly confronted with another dose of mega-fear. What do you do? Well, if you are both strategically brilliant and tactically skillful you do exactly what Obama, Pelosi, Reid & Frank have done during the past two weeks.
Firstly, you recognize the timing and the intended impact on the impending first debate between Obama and McCain.
You recognize that should you refuse to do everything you can to be responsive to the crisis, and explicitly open to dialogue with Republicans, as to reach a necessarily bi-partisan agreement you will be called everything from traitor to terrorist.
You recognize that if you immediately begin informing the public that the three page manifesto you had trust in your face amounts to nothing less than further ravage of the Constitution and poison to any hope of real economic recovery, you will likely see the vast majority of Americans being rambunctiously against “Wall St. welfare.’
You recognize that if you structure your responses as a transformation of Paulson’s trash into a framework of responsible containment of the supposed “crisis” you will have established the high-ground knowing full well that you have primed two critical responses.
One of those critical responses is that you recognized that the vast number of Republican incumbents would have very little chance of winning on 4 Nov 2008 if they supported the plan.
Knowing that, you would have realized that you could easily have a significant number of House Democratic members vote yes without risk, thus diffusing any claim that the Democratic Party was unwilling to support an albeit lame and dishonest Republican President.
Knowing that. you would have painted the Republican members of the House in exactly the picture the entire world saw – they, for the first time in eight years, broke with their President because they knew that if they voted yes – ostensibly the heroic action that the “crisis” demanded – they would be crucified on 4 Nov 2008. Politics trumped serving the good of Americans – and its all the Republican members of the House’s fault.
Now, all that Obama, Pelosi, Frank, Reid and their colleagues need to do is:
1. Incessantly state that they put party politics aside, even in an election year, and tried to support the President;
2. Incessantly state that now that the President’s plan has been rejected by his own party, a plan that was obviously deficient even after much effort on the part of Democratic members of both the Senate and the House working in a collaborative spirit with Republicans, they have decided to bring an even better solution to the vast greed, regulatory collapse, and national security-threatening behavior during the past eight years of Bush and his cronies in Congress.
Fact is, as I write this (2130 PDT – 29 Sept 2008) the Nikkei 225 is down 2.8% and the Hang Seng is down 1.7% -- i.e., the Asian markets aren’t happy but they are not collapsing.
Thus, we have some difficult moments ahead, but with an Administration and Congress that focuses on and enables all the real products and services that Americans can begin manufacturing and delivering in the next decade and thereafter, we have zero reason to cooperate with yet another scam from the greed and fear crowd, i.e., ‘the haves and have mores,’ whom have been Bush’s base these past ugly, immoral, and criminal eight years.
Time for real change, indeed.
I tracked the Asian markets during the night. The Nikkei had closed down, but the Hang Seng began to recover and closed up 0.76 %. As the Hang Seng swung positive, S&P Futures were moving up sharply ... correlated with early news that the Congress and White House were working on a new version of the legislation.
McCain has been
for his behavior during the past 10 days.
Obama and the Democratic leadership have NOT been Rovered.
What was obviously a scam, meant to enable McCain to have a 'white horse save the world' moment hours before the debate failed. It failed because of elegant, calm, intelligent leadership.
We have a credit crisis. We have a trust crisis. We have vast debt.
These are facts that are undeniable and that require persistent, aggressive resolution. We need legislation now that begins to address the root problems and does so in a manner that does not compromise President Obama's ability to work with Congress to repair all the damage done since Reagan.
The fundamentals of why credit is in crisis involves the vast destruction of sensible regulation and fiscal management, launched by Reagan and owned by Gramm, Bush, McCain and all their neoconster, corporatist buddies.
Much work to be done, and based on Senator Obama's actions these past two weeks, we have reason for hope because he demonstrates every day he knows how to lead.
Thank you.