Negligence? Or deliberate endangerment?

Even as our government is supposed to be trying to support our economy through this difficult time in order to bring about a return to prosperity, we have a definite pattern among senior Democrats that’s working to undermine this. First, this past June, New York’s senior senator, Charles Schumer (D-NY), took deliberate action that sparked the run that brought down IndyMac. Time was, he would have been indicted for provoking the stampede. If he were a Republican, he probably still would be.Then, on Monday, having helped put a bipartisan agreement together on an economic rescue bill, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), gave her troops the tacit green light—and key lieutenants the explicit green light—to vote it down, thereby sending the stock market into a tailspin.As if that weren’t enough, on Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told a group of reporters that “a major insurance company—one with a name that everyone knows” was “on the verge of going bankrupt.” The utterly predictable result was a sharp fall in stock prices across the insurance industry, since Sen. Reid’s vague comment called all those companies into question.The problem here is that, as every member of Congress ought to understand by now, “if we have learned anything amid the panic over Bear, Lehman, Merrill and adventures in naked short-selling, it is that rumors can obliterate economic value, instantly.” The fact that so many of our legislators (and not only Democrats, but including far too many senior members of that party) are behaving with so little care toward the institutions that are the engines that drive our national economy is deeply troubling. Rather like Barack Obama’s adventures in Iraqi policy, their behavior raises a couple possibilities.On the one hand, all this behavior could be absolutely deliberate: they could be intentionally working to worsen the economy at home and delay gains abroad in order to improve their own election prospects and those of their party. This could all be a willful effort with malice aforethought at political manipulation, putting the good of the Democratic Party ahead of the good of the nation.Or, it could be a combination of negligence, incompetence, and sheer folly. As Lois McMaster Bujold has her character Dr. Vorthys put it in her novel Komarr, “Carelessness, stupidity, haste, and ignorance are quite as powerfully destructive forces as homicidal intent. Though I must confess a special distaste for intent. It seems so unnecessarily redundant. It’s . . . anti-engineering.” I share his distaste; as such, I tend to agree with the principle, “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.” In this case, however (as in many), that isn’t terribly reassuring, as Jennifer Rubin explains:

But if we assume that they “meant no harm” we are left with an equally troubling conclusion: they are reckless and ignorant about the ways in which their words and actions may impact a fragile economy. Or to put it differently, their first consideration is invariably “How do we maximize the public’s perception that things are rotten?” rather than “What can we do to contain the conflagration?”It does remind one of their attitude on the Iraq war: every set back was gleefully trumpeted and every minor advance was dismissed. They never much cared how their rhetoric or votes might embolden the enemy or unnerve our ally. The sole consideration was domestic political gain. If they didn’t want to lose they certainly gave every indication it was low on their list of priorities. Bashing the President, rallying their base and positioning themselves for the next election was clearly more critical.Well, at least they are consistent.