Where's McWaldo?
We used to find John McCain at the economic poker table with his corporate cronies, a high-stakes gambler betting on deregulation of financial institutions until.... well.... the markets collapsed as criminally reckless mega financial institutions committed subprime-suicide when left to their own deregulated greed.
So.... now you'll find McWaldo on his campaign soap box preaching the joys of federal regulation and calling for the firing of the unfirable SEC chief.
He also used to place his Wall Street-backed bets on privatizing Social Security... he was a BIG supporter of privatizing Social Security with stock market securities, advocating in 2004, "Without privatization, I don't see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits."
Well.... this is over time. Hoping for voter and media amnesia.... McCain Denies Social Security Comments (Huffington). Yes, our elusive McWaldo said this June, "I'm not for quote privatizing Social Security, I never have been, I never will be."
As Eugene Robinson points out today in Flunking Economics, "John McCain was telling the truth when he said that economics wasn't his strong suit." (WaPo)
And, it seems a policy-wandering, clueless McWaldo proved his point this week.
On Monday McCain insisted that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," followed by rhetoric about AIG, the behemoth insurance company that was teetering on the brink.... "I do not believe that the American taxpayer should be on the hook for AIG, we cannot have the taxpayers bail out AIG or anybody else."
But, within hours, in the latest corporate-welfare move by the Bush administration, the federal government bailed out AIG to the tune of $85 billion.... so McCain quickly reversed himself, saying the government was "forced" to make this move.
Not even his own advisers have confidence in McWaldo's fitness for the job. As Robinson points out, "Adding insult to injury, one of McCain's most vocal campaign surrogates former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina - volunteered that McCain wasn't qualified to run a major corporation."
You probably won't see her on the stump for McCain again anytime soon.
Besides bad advice from his career-lobbyists campaign staff, it seems McCain's major problem is that he just wants the presidency too much. Voters used to think they knew exactly where McCain stood on the issues.... they could pick out their McWaldo in any political landscape.
No more. McCain has squandered the best thing he had going for him in his quest to get the presidency for his sake, not ours.... he squandered his reputation for standing on principal.
His Straight Talk Express is now careening wildly about the countryside trying to please voters by taking the latest popular detours on hot issues.
Would someone please send McWaldo a striped stocking cap so we can find him in the good ol' boy crowd....
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