As the financial industry collapses McCain takes the route so loved and used by Republicans: personal attacks.  Trembling with indignation he accuses Wall Street of being driven by greed and self-interest, and he tries to show is leader-cahones  by saying he'd fire SEC Chairman Cox (although as president he couldn't do that, and, by all accounts Cox has been a pretty decent chairman).  McCain is going to clean up Wall Street.

What, Mr. McCain are you doing to do -- take greed and self-interest out of Wall Street?  Make the financial industry into a charitable organization?  Someone should really press McCain about what he thinks the problem is and how he plans to clean it up.  He self-righteousness could hardly ring hollower. That just days ago McCain was using the banking industry as an example for health care makes his self-righteousness ring hollow.

That's because McCain's rage about people is clearly a head fake to avert public attention from the real problem, which is not people or their 'morals,' but the deregulated rules of the game.  And McCain fingerprints are all over the philosophy and initiatives of deregulation.  How may thousands of video clips must there be of McCain advocating getting government and its regulations out of the way? 

The public should be inundated with them.

With Wall Street collapsing, John McCain takes the route favored by Republicans: personal attacks.  McCain attacks the movers and shakers of Wall Street for being "greedy," for putting their self-interest before the country.  Trembling with indignation he says he would fire Chairman Cox for not doing his job.

Wipe out greed and self-interest from Wall Street?  Ha!  As laughable as that is, is it possible that no one could ask him how he would do that?  Maybe turn Wall Street into a charitable organization? 

As preposterous as McCain is, his move is strategic: keep people's attention on the personalities involved and off the deregulated rules of the game. Changeling McCain will try to become whatever he thinks he needs to become to win the election.  But with regard to corporate regulation he is and always has been a 100% non-maverick Republican.  How many times has he, his wife, Palin, Gramm and all his spokespeople said we need to get government and its regulations off our backs? 

There's a ton of video out there with McCain singing the deregulation song.  It should be replayed, repeatedly.

McCain, a high-roller who has a penchant for drama and high risk (he'd like to call this being a 'maverick'), is seeing the polls tip back toward Obama.  Indeed the polls may swing heavily given the shift to economic substance rather than fluff.  He could end up the wannabe candidate of June. 

This is alarming, for McCain.

If he can't find some hook in current events to advance his candidacy, then h'll look inward.  A campaign shake-up is perfect 'inward-looking.'  He'll try to present this shake-up as a form of  'maverickness.'  Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised to hear him turn against his own campaign and say 'They did it,'  or  even better "I trusted these guys, but they didn't meet the grade, so I'm going to shake up this campaign just like I'm going to shake up Washington." 

There will be some deperate moves in the end-game.  We'll see if he goes down this path.

As reported by TPM, Chris Matthews took Rep. Cantor, a darling right-wing spokesman, "to the woodshed."  There has been a lot of strategizing about how to link McCain to Bush, featuring high rates of McCain voting with Bush.  Matthews has found a somewhat more elegant -- ok, blunter -- way of connecting McCain to Bush, and that is that they are both Republicans. 

By focusing on party rather than personality, one diminishes the significance of any 'maverick' cloak McCain may want to wrap himself in to distinguish himself from Bush and the Republicans.  If MJcCain is a maverick, he's totally a Republican maverick.  But the fact is, that McCain campaigned as and is the Republican nominee, and he can't simply disavow any connection to the world of Republicans at this point, maverick or not.  As the standard bearer of his party he has sacrificed any dramatic and provocative sense of being a maverick: Ron Paul is makes McCain look like a circus pony when in comes to being a maverick.

In accepting the Republican nomination, McCain also must accepted its legacy.  That legacy should be hung around McCain's neck, the Republican nominee.  Matthews was pit-bullishly (no lipstick) trenchant in this, and in calling out the Republicans for trying to act as if they aren't Republicans he embarrasses them.  This is a line of attack that Democrats should pick up and highlight.

MaCain is out with a new ad in response to the fiscal crises of the week, and it's not only filled with empty platitudes -- 'cleaning up Wall Street,' but he again segues to his being a POW.

Chris Matthews should have this as his big number: To how many different questions/issues has McCain responded with some version of "I was a POW"?  Off the cuff I can think of these.  What others are there?

1. I can clean up Wall Street.
2. How many houses do I have?

Obama retakes lead.
The cross tabs are especially good news.

Politico reports that the press staged an 'insurrection' because they've had no access to McCain in over a month.  It seems that it's not just Palin that McCampaign is cocooning from the press, but Mr. Straight Talk himself.  Why? 

The MSM -- evermore examples of it -- is confronting McLiar with his 'straight talk,' and perhaps rediscovering that there is actually not only joy in demanding the truth, but the dignity of journalism requires it.  I think that TPM, specifically Josh Marshall, may deserve some credit for focusing on what he calls the major media story of the election, that the MSM is hoping to substitute a formalistic equality for equality of judgment. 

Specifically, the choice is this: if as a journalist your claim to be dedicated to the truth, then, trusting  your instincts for the truth, you follow the thread of a story wherever it leads, you make judgments, constantly, between what seems to be the truth, and what truly is the truth (the classical philosohical distinction).  The ancient Greeks had a great word for it: parrhessia, which denotes the citizen's courage to speak the truth even if politically dangerous or complicated  (Socrates is the classic example.)  Journalists should be 'parrhesiasts.' Josh is claiming they aren't.

The second route is that which has been taken by most of the MSM, and which Josh is implicitly (or explicitly) indicts: this is a journalism that reports not the truth in some topic, self-edits it's report so as to avoid any (political) charge of being biased.  The hope is that by trying to make both sides seem equal one will not have tipped over into commentary (which is opinion as opposed to fact).  The irony is this: to subordinate the (apparent partisan) truth to a formal appearance of being equinimical isn't to avoid the political (although it aims to seem to), but it is to report things through the filter of a political calcuation that seeks not the truth, but the appearance of truth. 

The irony: to report opposing sides as being more or less equal when, in fact, the reporter knows they aren't, is to abandon the truth for a precarious political calucation that aims at appearing to be politically neutral.  In this case, a person is no longer a journalist seeking truth, but a journalist becomes a political stage hand, playing the game of 'seeming.'  Is it a mystery how this formalistic 'equality' has led to the blurring of commentary and news reporting?  Fox News.

The SNL skit ended on the best note.  She said, to paraphrase, that the press needs to grow some gonads and if they couldn't, she would lend them hers.  Maybe the MSM is experiencing 'budding journalistic gonads.'  If so, perhaps TPM has been a stimulus thereto. 

Thank goodness!!

McCain now says that Wall Street needs more regulation (pace Phil Gramm). Obama needs to make it clear that it’s not just more regulation of Wall Street that's needed, but that the entire system is out of kilter.  Yes, it’s great that in America you can work hard and become rich.  But the obscene compensation schemes common to corporate America (especially the financial industry) is something else: when CEO’s of failing corporations walk away with millions of dollars in severance pay, it should be offensive to the average worker's work ethic.  This is why the rich are getting richer and the middle class is getting wiped out: their 401K’s and pension funds are getting wiped out while corporate leaders will be forced to give up a private jet (maybe). 

More and better regulation is needed, but it’s not just a matter under-capitalization, or naked short selling, or various forms of leveraging that are the problem.  It is the culture of greed that outstrips any conceivable scale of value.  Obama needs to own this theme – McCain and the Republicans aren’t going to go there with any enthusiasm (unless they see net votes in it).

It’s not just financial process, it’s economic substance that is the issue.

We know that Palin took per diems for 300 nights when she was at home.  Unseemly but possibly not illegal.  However, if she didn't report those per diems on her 1040, which are not included on a W-2, then she's practicing tax evasion.  A tax vetter might ask her if she had any other income from investments, etc., that should be reported, and she might well have thought of the per diems not as income, but reimburesements for expenses, so, she might say 'no.'  Nevertheless, it is taxable income.  If she didn't report this and it comes to light, I think she's blown out of the water.

The recent meltdown on Wall street offers Obama a golden opportunity to change the subject of the campaign to his home court.  If he can come forward in the next 18 to 36 hours with some prescriptions for dealing with the fiscal crisis and, most important of all, making it clear that Wall Street high-rollers will bear the brunt of this (as they should) rather than the middle-class, he will be in good shape.

McCain is on record -- even today!! -- saying things that give everyone reason to have no faith in his stewardship of the economy.  For all his 'reforming,' he's never participated in a single fiscal or economic reform.  Indeed, Phil Graham should be featured on adds as the author of the laws deregulating banking that led to this collapse -- the same guy who called us whiners and insists that the fundamentals are in good shape.  This guy should be made out to be McCain chief economic Dunce!

And add like this would be great.

Voice with picture of McCain with a smaller picture of Phil Graham:

"Let us introduce you to Phil Graham.  Senator Graham was Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs.  He co-sponsored the Commodities and Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which came to be known ans the Enron loop hole."

Picture of Enron sign falling down and breaking.

Voice:  "Good job, Phil!"

"Phil was the author of the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 that deregulated the banking industry.  Now, thanks to Phil, the mortgage industry has collapsed, and Wall Street is collapsing too.  Thanks Phil."

Picture of Merrill-Lynch Bull going hoof up.

Phil video: "the fundamentals of the economy are strong."

McCain video: "the fundamentals of the economy are strong." 

Voice: "Where does McCain get his schooling in economics?  From Sen. Phil Graham, his chief advisor on the economy and Co-Chair of his campaign."

"John McCain says he's ready to lead from day one.  Who can afford to follow?

The Obama campaign has, understandably, faced difficulty in addressing Palin's preparedness to become president without stirring up a lot of white noise, like 'are you being ageist by taking so seriously her being a heartbeat away from being president (i.e., McCain is old)'?

How to make the segue from Paliin to the presidency?  In a sense, there is no need to.  Rather, ask this question: Is Sarah Palin ready to step into the shoes of Dick Cheney, with certainty (and not hypotheically) on January 20th, 2009?  Take on her strong suit: Do we want her, as was the case with Dick Cheney, to serve as the Energy Czar?  McCain has said she knows more about energy than anyone else in the United States.  Is he going to actually treat her like the wisest person (or even public official as Guiliani suggested) and give her that sort of responsibility?  I would love to see the Republicans defend the thesis that Sarah Palin knows more about energy than Dick Cheney, who, of course, had imcomparably more more executive and energy experience that Palin.  Do we want a novice, scrappy version of Dick Cheney in the VP position on energy?  Or in charge of anything?

One of the things that Cheney did and every VP has to do is serve as the tire kicker.  He certainly had enormous qualifications to kick the tires of the military operation in Iraq and Afganistan (that he did a lousy job is not the point) -- he was, after all, a former Secretary of Defense.  With no international or military experience, is Sarah Palin in a position to be McCain's chief executive emmisary to visit and offer first-hand assessments of the war, or any other military action?

In other words, there is a strategic problem in Sarah Palin as a VP that has nothing, immediately, to do with whether she could step in and be president.  Palin said shortly before being selected by McCain that she didn't know what the VP does all day, and McCain has picked a VP who is unqualified to do any and all the things a VP does.  McCain's describes the VP's job is to check on the health of the president, but this is belied by the enormous increase in responsibility that the VP has acquired in the last 16 years, an increase in importance that likely cannot easily be decreased even if McCain, in his cynicism, seems to image Sarah Palin hanging around the Naval Observatory waiting for a phone call.

The importance of the Vice-Presidency needs to be strongly highlighted, and with it the qualifications it takes to be a worthy candidate for the office.  Instead of acquiescing to McCain description of the vice-presidency as merely a maid-in-waiting, one should challenge his judgement about such a description and, mutatis mutandis, McCain's judgment in picking Palin..  He should have to answer the question: Gore was given large and important tasks, Cheney was given large and important tasks.  What large and important tasks is McCain going to give Palin.  If it's reform (I suspect that will be the suggestion) McCain needs to say why he thinks Palin will experience significantly more suggess in reforming Washington that did Gore, who was given a comparable job in Clinton's second term, or even more than McCain himself -- Palin will succeed where the boss did little more than 'buck the system' on occassion?  Reform specifics: that's what we need to know about Palin's portfolio.

As for Biden, he's prima facie comparable to Cheney.  No one wonders whether he is able to begin, January 20th, of having a meaning portfolio as a vice-president.

Run Palin against Cheny-Biden.

Karl Rove had some simple recipes for conducting a political campaign, and one of them was about how to deal with your opponent.  The goal, simply, was to destroy the opponent by character attacks -- not a novel concept.  But Rove's metier was to attack their strength rather than their weakness.  So, for instance, we have had a spate of ads focusing on Obama's popularity and trying to turn it against him: this is the direction his campaign has taken since Schmidt took over.

Well, McCain has had almost a pathologically protective attitude about his honor -- not only can he not stand to have anyone question his honor, he couldn't stand it to have a reporter ask him how he would define honor.  But he found the limit to honor, and that is the power and prestige of the presidency.

The great irony is that McCain, Senator Straight Talk and honor above all, hired Rovean managers who McCain knew from first hand experience have absolutely no concern for honor.  For them, winning is everything, and in hiring them, McCain made winning everything, more important that honor.  The widespread revoltion at his tactics has become the week's lead story.

Having struck his Faustian bargain with Rovean politics, he now, ironically, invites the exactly the sort of attack Rovean politics calls for: at one and the same time he makes his biography and character the focus of his positive message and yet he lies, he insists on lying even in the face of contravening facts, tells half-truths. 

If Rove is right -- destroy their strength and the rest will take care of itself -- McCain may well end up an autodafait, destroying his own political strength, his character, at which point all that is left of him are some hacknied Bush policies.

There may be poetic justice to be had in all this yet!