Get Familiar: John McCain's Economics

There are few backdrops to a presidential campaign more fitting than the current financial crisis in the United States. I take no joy in the ongoing destruction, but it does provide an obvious platform on which we might consider the presidential candidates.

Thus far, Barack Obama has offered appeals to patience and has resisted a radical response in the name of campaign currency. But he also has done little to demonstrate real economic chops and did vote for a bailout package that fell woefully short of proper review and was never challenged by any competing proposals. That's a real negative. And, it's discouraging.

We all know what John McCain did. Putting country first, as always, he suspended his campaign and swooped into Washington just in time to upset a meeting with the President, inject extreme partisanship into the process, and submarine initial efforts. Then he kept yammering on and on about "fundamentals" meaning "workers" before eventually voting for the same bad bill. He also rode the Straight Talk Express to Insincere Populistville, where he stepped off the train to rail against inadequate regulation and Wall Street "fat cats." Only, he didn't really mean it (I don't think) since he has spent his entire career fighting regulation and taking economic cues from Phil Gramm. This Phill Gramm.

What we should remember is that John McCain is no stranger to the evils of ideology gone wrong. He, of course, was one of the Congressmen bought and paid for during the S&L scandal of the 1980s. Luckily, to help us remember, we now have Keating Economics, courtesy of Barack Obama's campaign. Peep the trailer:



And if you want to know even more about Captain America, you might want to read this Rolling Stone piece about McCain's life spent relying on nepotism, treating people like shit, and grandstanding as a "maverick." Before anyone howls with anger that McCain is "being treated this way," please don't forget that Obama was undressed quite thoroughly by The New Yorker back in July. It's not like we can't know what we want about either of these men.