Changing the Subject

October 07, 2008

As Wall Street suffered even more losses yesterday, the New York Daily News reported this from a top McCain strategist: "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose." So John McCain's trying to change the subject, hoping to distract voters with smears and distortions that Time's Joe Klein calls a "desperate empty embarrassment."

It's no wonder McCain doesn't want to talk about the economy. By fighting to roll back regulations on Wall Street, he helped land us in the mess we're in now. Maybe that's why McCain famously insisted "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" even as the giant investment firms started to collapse. And as the situation got worse, he told 60 Minutes, "I think the deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy."

But if the Bush-McCain policies have helped grow the economy, why did the U.S. lose 159,000 jobs in September? That amounts to the worst month in five years and continues a string of nine consecutive months of job losses. McCain's top adviser Greg Strimple had this response to the bad economic news: "We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis."

Barack Obama saw this crisis coming and urged government intervention to face it head-on in a March 22, 2007 letter to Chairman Bernanke and Secretary Paulson. Obama is the leader we need now, with a plan that will to dig us out of this mess and restore the middle class. McCain's plan? More tax cuts for the wealthy and even more deregulation.

We don't need to change the subject, we need to change direction.

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