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Politicking On An Economic Disaster

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By GAIL COLLINS New York Times News Service

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 26, 2008

How do you think the besieged financial community felt when the White House announced that George W. Bush was going to address the nation on television Wednesday night?

Hopeful? Terrified?

"We are in the midst of a serious financial crisis," the president said, reading his lines flatly and stolidly, like an announcer delivering a long public-service message about new parking regulations for the holiday season. The whole event had a kind of unreality to it, since Bush has arrived at that unhappy point in American public life when a famous person begins to look like a celebrity impersonator.

There is, in a way, a kind of talent required to tell the nation that it's teetering on the brink of disaster in a way that makes the viewers' attention wander. Bush's explanation about how the rescue bill would unclog the lines of credit made the whole thing sound less important than a Liquid-Plumr commercial.

But help is on the way! John McCain and Barack Obama joined Bush at the White House to work over the details of a rescue bill. As Obama put it: "The risk of doing nothing is economic catastrophe."

Or, as Sarah Palin told Katie Couric on CBS News on Wednesday night: "Not necessarily this, as it's been proposed, has to pass or we're gonna find ourselves in another Great Depression. But there has to be action taken, bipartisan effort - Congress not pointing fingers at this point at ... one another, but finding the solution to this, taking action and being serious about the reforms on Wall Street that are needed."

So say we all.

(Palin was unable to answer questions about McCain's record and relief for homeowners with troubled mortgages. But she did reveal forthrightly that she considers her running mate a "maverick.")

About that rescue bill. Passing it is going to be a test of true bipartisanship, which involves both sides deciding that they will share the blame for doing something messy and unpleasant. But first, Congress has to hold hearings until every single member of the House and Senate has had a chance to yell at Henry Paulson. This can be a surprisingly useful exercise. It is much easier to work up sympathy for the rescue plan once you've heard Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky call it "un-American."

Meanwhile, McCain announced that he was suspending his campaign, taking his ads off the air and going back to Washington to do something leaderlike and bipartisan. This was yet another new McCain, very different from last week's versions, that blamed Obama for the financial meltdown while tossing out rescue plans like a desperate dart player 10 minutes before the bar closes.

Last week, while McCain was desperately reinventing his position every day, Obama was withholding, declining to take a position until the administration plan had jelled. But in the end, it turned out that their ideas were both vaguely similar and similarly vague. On Wednesday, Obama called McCain to propose issuing a joint statement. Then McCain one-upped him by announcing that he wanted to postpone Friday's debate until the economy was rescued. His minions raced off to the news shows to say that the American people were "tired of debates and talking."

This election is turning into a Goldilocks story. One candidate's too hot, and one's too cool.

Gail Collins is a columnist for The New York Times.

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