Bailout/Suspension Bullshit Roundup

Here's an excellent, succinct explanation of why we should be skeptical of calls to pass a bailout bill ASAP:

"I must tell you, there are those in the public debate who have said that we must act now. The last time I heard that, I was on a used-car lot," said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Indiana. "The truth is, every time somebody tells you that you've got to do the deal right now, it usually means they're going to get the better part of the deal."

(Via Reason, via the Volokh Conspiracy.)

Meanwhile, Paul Krugman has a sneaking suspicion that:

[T]he plan came first, and all this stuff about price discovery is an after-the-fact rationalization, invented when people started asking questions.

It has seemed very strange to me that such a supposedly crucial economic program would be based on such an exotic argument. My sneaking suspicion is that they started with a determination to throw money at the financial industry, and everything else is just an excuse.

But there are reasons to be hopeful.

Wired reports that the Internet is facilitating the rapid planning of potentially massive real-world protests:

An e-mail that began as a rallying cry from a lone journalist to an influential circle of friends to protest the U.S. government bailout of Wall Street has ignited a national day of street protests. Some demonstrators plan to dump their rubbish in front of the bronze bull sculpture near Wall Street in downtown Manhattan Thursday.

"People are going to bring their own personal junk that they think is worth as much as the junk financial instruments that the government is proposing to buy from the Wall Street banks," says Andrew Boyd, an activist and freelance online-video artist for nonprofit groups in Manhattan. "We're hoping that people show up with their 8-track cassette collections, their old Spice Girl CDs, their surf boards that got bit by sharks and old Enron stock certificates."

And Reason notes that initial polling suggests that the American people are not playing along with McCain any more than Obama is--only 14 percent support suspending the campaigns and a mere 10 percent support delaying Friday's scheduled debate.

So why did McCain think this would be a good idea? Perhaps because a stunt very much like it worked for him in the past?

But, regardless of any of this, the McCain campaign is now also suggesting that Palin and Biden not go forward with their scheduled debate. I suppose Palin has to rush back to Alaska and drill some oil wells so we can achieve energy independence by Friday evening, too.

However, David Weigel offers a solution that I think sounds pretty good: Friday's debate should involve Obama, Barr, and Nader. Who needs McCain anyway?

Offering some incisive political analysis, Marc Ambinder writes:

This is the time when politics matters the most, not the least.

When the philosophical differences that each party organizes around are put to the test of reality.

...

Suspending your campaign basically says: all that over the past sixteen months? It wasn't important. Ignore what I said or did.

Too late.

The tough thing here for McCain is that nobody in Washington asked him to come back; nobody seems to need him to come back; and that Democrats simply do not trust John McCain's motives.

Also, he notes some serious irony in McCain's ever-changing statements about the economy:

Last week, Sen. McCain said the fundamentals of the economy were strong.

To Katie Couric, he said that the country faces its worst crisis since World War II.

It ain't over 'til it's over, but it seems that McCain just embarrassed himself immensely. Now, the question becomes whether he will be able to save face at all. If not, this could easily turn out to be a fatal mistake.