"Whatever the flaws of the plan, it or something like it was absolutely necessary, and the work done to craft it had been genuinely bipartisan, with the give-and-take that’s the heart of legislative work and that we haven’t seen in Congress in years. Of course taxpayers are outraged. There’s no reason to respect the authority of any institutions involved in this disaster. But the bill sank under the phony populism and long-discarded principles of legislators who have spent their entire careers leaving taxpayers and workers exposed to the ruthlessness of the deregulated market, and who would now rather see the market drag the country under than display the political courage to clean up their mess." Journalist George Packer served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo.
George Packer writes: It’s left to a relatively young black man, charged by his opponents with being a radical, a liberal, a community organizer, a Muslim, and the anti-Christ, to save the establishment on Wall Street and in Washington
The End Is Near
I’ll always think of September 29, 2008, as the day the conservative movement brought down the institutions. The morning began with Bill Kristol’s victory plan for the McCain-Palin campaign, which goes like this:
1. Have McCain take credit for the imminent bailout legislation and promise more tough, decisive leadership.
2. Liberate Sarah Palin to be herself: a conservative attack dog. “As one shrewd McCain supporter told me, ‘Every minute she spends not telling the American people something that makes them less well disposed to Obama is a minute wasted.’”
3. Accuse Obama of being too liberal. Again and again. And bring Rev. Wright back into the mix.
In other words: claim McCain played a role he didn’t in securing a bill that failed to pass. Then write a new script for Palin and say you freed her to be herself so that people will stop noticing that her real, unscripted candidacy is preposterous. Then go back to the old playbook one more time. It would be hard to invent a more dishonest political strategy. When a party, a movement, and its shills unravel, the panic leaves behind a pretty bad smell. Kristol, born with an impressive pedigree, long ago sacrificed his intellectual independence to the Republican Party. His career is a cautionary tale of the mental corruption that comes with political power, and it has degenerated alongside the conservative movement for which he’s been a tireless publicist.
Today that degeneracy produced the rotten fruit of a failed bailout. Some Democrats voted against the bill, but in far fewer numbers than Republicans. Does anyone doubt that it would have passed overwhelmingly if House conservatives hadn’t rebelled? Whatever the flaws of the plan, it or something like it was absolutely necessary, and the work done to craft it had been genuinely bipartisan, with the give-and-take that’s the heart of legislative work and that we haven’t seen in Congress in years. Of course taxpayers are outraged. There’s no reason to respect the authority of any institutions involved in this disaster. But the bill sank under the phony populism and long-discarded principles of legislators who have spent their entire careers leaving taxpayers and workers exposed to the ruthlessness of the deregulated market, and who would now rather see the market drag the country under than display the political courage to clean up their mess.
Watch Kristol forget that he just told McCain to take credit for getting the bill passed; watch McCain and Palin claim to have killed it on behalf of the outraged taxpayers. However low you bend, you won’t find a standard of truthfulness with this ticket and its backers. The Kristol Plan is the triumph of tactics over everything. It takes years and years spent writing propaganda to achieve that kind of purity.
Meanwhile, it’s left to a relatively young black man, charged by his opponents with being a radical, a liberal, a community organizer, a Muslim, and the anti-Christ, to save the establishment on Wall Street and in Washington.
