It's a Democrat Financial Crisis or an Obama White House

Clearly, John McCain's advisers put him under strict orders to guard his tongue during the debate at Ole Miss. He should have put that punk in his place and made headlines doing it. As it is, they sparred to a draw, giving the win to Barack Obama.

When Obama accused McCain of being complicit in the present economic mess because 90% of his votes in the Senate have agreed with the administration, McCain should have looked straight at him, and said, "Mr Obama, not only are you are a Senator, you are also part of the Democratic Party's governing majority in Congress. You are in no place to be pointing the finger at me. Let me tell you about that 10%. It's a 10% that you don't have in disagreement with your party! Congress has made a mess of our financial system are you are part of that."

But because McCain seems to want to present himself as a post-partisan unifier, he didn't criticize the Democrats. But the Democratic Congress is even more unpopular than the President, and they are responsible for this mess.

You must watch these two videos.

The first one from Fox News documents how the Bush administration saw this subprime loan trouble coming and tried to prevent through regulation Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from making all these bad loans to people who really could not afford to be in the housing market. But the Democrats blocked it. Fox provides footage of Barney Frank--yes, Barney Frank the extremely liberal Democrat from Massachusetts who is scolding Bush and Wall Street for this crisis and who is at the center of Congressional efforts to dig us out of the crisis--saying that all this talk of problems at Fannie and Freddie is just a Republican trick to deny mortgages to the poor (i.e. adjustable rates, subprime rates, no money down, interest only payments, no questions asked about income--step right up!). Brit Hume and Bret Baier ask, "What were those warning signs? Who raised them? Who raised them, and who disputed them?"

This next video, "Burning Down the House," is longer--ten minutes--and very fast paced, but people under thirty should have no problem keeping up with it. It shows how the crisis developed, viz. not the failure of free market capitalism, but Democrats forcing private financial institutions to lend money to people who are not credit worthy It then documents John McCain's opposition to all of this and Barack Obama's political and financial involvement with the whole caper and its chief culprits.

[Oct. 1 - The "Burning Down the House" video has been pulled from YouTube for this stated reason: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Warner Music Group."]

So why does McCain not tie this around his opponent's neck? Instead, he lets Obama and the Democrats define the problem as a capitalist problem (markets don't work; they must be directed by wise and benevolent bureaucrats) and a Republican problem (Republicans don't believe in any regulation ever--yes, he said that).

Finally, Barack Obama closed with a story about his father coming to America because he saw it as a land of opportunity. (He has gall mentioning his father who was a communist, and who took the "opportunity" to abandon baby Barack and his mother and head back to Kenya. But that aside.) He claimed that--here comes the down-on-America stuff--people around the world no longer see American that way. Of course, it only Barack and Michelle and their Amerika hating friends (like Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers) who don't see America that way. McCain should have used his final minute to draw attention to the continuing political goodness of this country and to the millions of people still clamoring to come here, yes, even from Muslim countries. Instead he repeated his commitment to help veterans. Obama pricked him on the issue and McCain feasted on the bait.

Despite what you hear about negative campaigning, Americans like a fighter. McCain needs to define his opponent for who he is and do so with a few solid, memorable blows of devastating wit. He has got it. He needs to use it. Otherwise, we will see the triumph of evil regimes abroad and painful lessons about government control at home.