Don’t believe the hype from the politicians, the bailout is all about politics. Congressional politics, Senatorial politics and most importantly Presidential politics. Two huge aspects of politics that often go unspoken are taking credit and assigning blame. Indeed many of the key policy positions of political parties in the United States and democracies around the world arose from their ability to either take credit or assign blame for actions on issues related to those positions. This bailout is no different, and the way it’s played by both political parties and their respective candidates has the potential to redraw the political map as we know it in this country for a generation to come, if not more, should one side take a bold action.

The current bailout plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has elicited a deep measure of skepticism in the electorate for a number of very poignant reasons. True conservatives absolutely detest spending taxpayer money to bailout anything, with many considering the current plan “financial socialism” as Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning termed it. Liberals aren’t so much turned off by the socialism than by the fact that it’s intended to go to the people in this country who need it the absolute least: Wall Street investment firms. Finally people from across the political spectrum can all think of much, much better things to do with their hard earned $700 Billion than to go and gamble it on a financial industry that has already had a number of bailouts and is still falling apart.

Now enter the Presidential candidates. John McCain has seen his slim lead, which arose out of the bounce from the Republican National Convention and his introduction of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, completely turned on its head from the recent economic news. Voters prefer Democrats in general and Barack Obama specifically to handle economic issues by a wide margin, and Senator Obama has shot up in the polls as a result.

With no signs of the economic crisis abating any time in the near future and certainly not before the Presidential election on November 4th, McCain needed to do something. Doing something in politics often means appearing to do something, so the thing McCain sought to appear to do was take a bold action on the economy by “suspending his campaign” to “focus on the economy”. Neither of these actions took the usual course you might expect. Suspending the campaign consisted of essentially saying the campaign was suspended while continuing to go to events, continuing to send his running mate, Sarah Palin, to events, and continuing to run campaign advertisements. Focusing on the economy consisted of going to several fancy Manhattan hotels for speeches and hobnobbing before hightailing it down to Washington yesterday afternoon, 22 hours after the campaign “suspension” (it takes less than hour to fly from New York to DC).

Meanwhile, Congressional leaders were playing politics of their own. Not wanting to let McCain interfere with the bailout negotiations and attempt to take credit for them, leaders from both parties announced from the Capitol that the outline of a deal had been agreed to yesterday morning, before McCain arrived in town.

But McCain was not to be outdone. Reports surfaced of him huddling with House Minority Leader John Boehner then running off when reporters attempted to ask him questions. Soon thereafter House Republicans, desperate for a new identity after the Bush years decimated their party announced they were revolting against the negotiated outline of the plan.

The House GOP “revolt” gives McCain the opportunity to either look as though he’s brokering a deal or to group with House Republicans and reject any compromise that comes out of the negotiations to try and gain political traction. The key lies in the actions of Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress who must be careful not to get trapped in an unpopular compromise with George W. Bush which John McCain could then turn around to gain the desperately needed upper hand on economic issues while distancing himself from George W. Bush simultaneously. It nearly happened yesterday until Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer caught wind of McCain’s political plays and stopped the compromise dead in its tracks, demanding a majority of House Republicans sign on before any legislation passed.

You can takepart by contacting your Representative in Congress and demanding they stop playing politics with the nation’s economic future and pass a responsible economic plan for America’s future.

LINKS:

The Times of London: Obama shoots past McCain in polls amid economic fears

Chicago Tribune: Bailout, yes.   Everything else, no.

Boston Herald: Action on bailout risky for both candidates