Coffeehouse fodder [a]

Huh? Subprime meltdown? I thought that was months ago, way beyond my attention/memory.

I guess we can add this to the fixtures of our daily lives like restaurants without trans fat, $4 gas, and tv shows that run from January to May. Or maybe it's worse. Like snowballing or something. Months ago there was a crisis for companies I'd never heard of like Countrywide and Bear Stearns. Now household names like AIG, Merrill Lynch, and perhaps WaMu are going under. I guess this thing is picking up steam rather than hanging in a limbo of slow decay like airlines.

That's rather too bad.

But it's kind of cool for the presidential debates that start next Friday. If the political climate is concern for our jobs, savings, loans, and investments, we're going to hear a lot less fear mongering. That's nice.

Indeed, this financial thing has already brought the Dr. Jekyll out of Johnny Mac. There it is, mid-interview he goes from partisan mouthpiece back to pre-2008 maverick. Near as I can tell, this was a rare opportunity for him to speak without a prompter and perhaps reason took over. He illustrated eloquently, if inadvertently, a fundamental incongruity of his platform:

1. The taxpayer shouldn't have to shoulder this bailout (platform; low taxes).
2. This crisis is the fault of a few CEOs doing unethical things (uh oh, you're suggesting it could have been avoided).
3. We need to get some smart people together to make sure this doesn't happen again (yipes, that's regulation, welcome to the vast grey area between the left and right).

The last debate was a bunch of flag waving and hunch-scowling. The two topics were war and character.

But now, thanks to a small and elite group of morally vacant executives, we suddenly care about the economy. It seems bank statements and gas pumps are far less abstract to the voting masses than budget deficit figures. Better we realize it now than when our tax revenue disappears into interest and the government contracting sector bubble bursts.

A blessing in disguise. Thank you golden parachutists!

So looking forward I wonder if the first debate will feature Candidate McCain, the man that pulls all the usual political tricks of ad hominem, feigning offense, and criticizing unpartisan and legitimate idea because they are not his own. Or will we see Senator McCain, the legislator that is a conservative before he is a Republican, hip to the SNL/Jon Stewart generation, and dares to speak ill of his own party members.

With any luck, substance will abound next Friday night. Because even if the candidates agree that regulation is the way to prevent unbridled, bottom-line greed, the implementation is tricky. Apparently regulatory agencies have to balance oversight and critical evaluation on the clock with sex and blow off the clock.

Standing up for the heartland [a]

So we all got a hot dose of reality and psychology:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

It didn't go over so well. Not surprising from a society that will reem a political figure over recounting the causal chain that our mothers repeat every day of our young lives:
Studying -> good grades -> college and career.
Slacking -> bad grades -> McDonalds or Marines.

But Obama's logic is pretty clear, when things get grey, you go with what you know. In the case of rural Pennsylvanians, that would be guns and isolationism. The same could be said, on a much larger scope, for 1930's America. Indeed, the correlation works at any level of granularity. Personally, I'll retreat to the garage or xbox. My buddy used to 'surf cause it's free' before he became a well-paid chemo-bio-geneto-gineer.

McCain and Clinton labeled his remarks elitist. Funny, his own religion and criticism of free trade have been pretty salient recently, to say nothing for his experience with firearms and immigration issues. Obama seems to have a great deal in common with the people he is 'marginalizing'.

But maybe they're not saying he's an elitist because guns and antipathy have a negative connotation. Maybe he's an elitist because he's analyzing and sympathizing with a demographic. Nobody likes to be evaluated.

There really is no need to analyze the McCain/Clinton logic because none exists. Like Kerry, Obama said something that could somehow be construed as derogatory and they had to capitalize. But this is unfortunate for two reasons.

First, the media spotlight that might otherwise draw attention to economic suffering has been hijacked in order to throw a little dirt.

More fundamentally, Obama identified the abhorrent effects of recession. Perhaps these could be key issues in a country with tanking finances. But instead of expressing concern or at least questioning his logic, the other presidential hopefuls divined an implication that was not there.

McCain emphasized that gun ownership and fundamentalism are a part of rural culture, rather than an effect of poverty. I wonder how he classifies the other issues Obama mentioned, namely isolantionism and xenophobia. By not linking them to financial straits or disproving the correlation, isn't he implying that country folk hate what's different? Clinton, Obama, Paul, Perot. Get on this! He's one of them new-age conservatives that flies jet fighters and goes on those New York tv pro-gruhms.