I’d figured that the crisis around Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be a hanging curveball right in Sen. McCain’s wheelhouse, since (as I pointed out at some length a few days ago) he’s been warning us for years that this was coming; all he really had to do was stand up and say so. Instead, we’ve seen a pretty erratic week from him. I think John Podhoretz overstates things a little, but not much, when he writes,
Substantively, this has been the worst week of John McCain’s campaign—and I mean since its beginning, in early 2007. With a perfect argument to make on his own behalf—that he saw the problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and called them out in 2005 while others were still angling for their largesse, and that therefore he possesses the experience and demonstrated the kind of leadership and insight that are required for the presidency—he instead flailed about. Calling for the firing of Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Chris Cox? Right there, in that act, we got a glimpse of why senators so often make bad presidential candidates. From time immemorial, senators haughtily acts as though the dismissal of executive branch officials is a form of policymaking when it is almost always the opposite—an act of scapegoating.As SEC chairman, Cox only possesses the regulatory authority granted to him by acts of Congress, i.e., by senators like McCain. Cox did not and does not possess the regulatory authority to halt the creation of the poorly collateralized securities that nearly brought Wall Street down last week. But the naming and pursuit of villains was McCain’s gut instinct last week, as he seemed to attempt to don Teddy Roosevelt’s mantle as the crusader against “malefactors of great wealth.”
This sort of thing is the reason why so many of us on the conservative side have long had reservations about Sen. McCain; that shot at Chairman Cox was completely uncalled-for, unjustified, and counterproductive. (If he really is serious about the egregious Andrew Cuomo to replace him, that would be even worse.) I don’t think it’s really likely that he will “blow the debate and lose the election” as a consequence, even if he doesn’t snap out of grandstanding mode and “start talking like a serious-minded person with a sophisticated sense of the stakes” again, since I don’t think Barack Obama will be in a position to take any real advantage if he doesn’t; but he certainly won’t help himself any—and of greater importance, he won’t be doing the country any favors either.