Ronald Coase, a Nobel laureate, once commented that a famous article by Milton Friedman, another Nobel laureate, in which Friedman argued that economics should focus exclusively on empirical and not normative topics was, itself, almost entirely normative. Such irony may be lost on some of us who ponder from time to time how it happens there are so many smart people with advanced degrees in economics who nonetheless hold absurd political views. Being a scholar doesn’t keep one from being a human being, warts and all. Approaching the point slightly differently, I am reminded of Bertrand Russell’s observation (in an age when British scholars typically did not require doctorates) that there was no contradiction at all in the statement “Jones is an M.A. and a fool.”

Krugman may be the go-to guy, for all I know, when it comes to matters of economic geography. I liked his columns much better, though, when the Times thought I should have to pay for them and thus kept them from my accidental perusal.

That’s important to me, because good explanations require precision, but “greed” and “not regulated enough” are not very precise answers. Greed is a perpetual aspect of the human condition, so why did it cause this problem now, and not years ago? “Not regulated enough” is exceptionally vague, since it doesn’t tell us what is wrong with the current set of regulations and just which new regulations would solve the problem. (That also applies to the Republican mantra: “We have enough regulations, we just need to enforce them.”)

And the more I read about this situation, the more I see specific explanations of how government action helped both create and exacerbate this problem. I have previously mentioned how the federal government demanded that Fannie and Freddie make increasingly risky loans. Businesses don’t like to make risky loans–they tend not to be repaid, which is bad for the bottom line. But when the government, which has chartered you as a special quasi-private business tells you to do so, and you have every reason to believe that they will take care of you when those loans go bad, then you suddenly have reason to engage in riskier behavior than you previously would have. That’s a specific explanation for one part of the crisis.

The mark to market rule is also a specific explanation. If Company X sells a security for a low price, other companies are forced (at least so far as I understand this bizarre thing) to revalue their own securities at that low price, even if their real value to the company is unchanged. That screws up the account balance, and makes companies appear less profitable, which results in all the bad things mentioned here. The fact that I don’t understand the mark to market problem yet doesn’t change the fact that it’s a much more specific claim than “greed” and “too little regulation.” And note that “mark to market” is a regulation–suggesting that “too little” regulation may not really be the problem so much as “too much” or at least “ill advised” regulation.

And most recently, I found this, from Yale Law School’s Jonathan Macey.

For years the SEC has hampered companies’ ability to protect themselves from manipulation by short-sellers. The most effective way for a company to respond to an attempt to manipulate its share prices is simply to repurchase its own shares, simultaneously “squeezing” the short positions and sending a clear signal of financial health to the capital market.

However, companies have long felt vulnerable to being charged by the SEC with manipulation whenever they go into the market to make share repurchases. The SEC finally acknowledged this problem after the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman when it stated publicly that “historically, issuers generally have been reluctant to undertake repurchases” when faced with manipulative short-sellers because of the massive amount of uncertainty about whether the SEC would sue them for trying to manipulate the market.

This is an argument not about the initial cause of the current crisis, but about a condition that exacerbated it. And it’s not only a specific explanation, but it is, again, an explanation of how a particular regulation is part of the problem.

I don’t see anything ideological about that. It would be much more ideological to ignore all such specific analyses and stick to a vague and indeterminate claim that “markets can’t work by themelves, there’s too much greed and speculation, so we need more unspecified regulations.”

Barack Obama is going to be charged with treason, because on his recent trip to the Middle East and Europe he was trying to persuade soldiers to go AWOL and quit the army.

Really. The girl who cuts my hair is a student of mine, and an Obama supporter, but her manager actually believes it. Really.

And I suppose it’s just the mainstream media keeping the news from us.

Founded in Salt Lake City in 1975, the Summum faith believes Moses originally descended from Mount Sinai not with the Ten Commandments, but with a set of seven principles - or aphorisms - that he revealed to only a select few. Over the last decade, leaders of the faith have sought to erect monuments of the aphorisms in numerous Utah towns alongside displays of the Ten Commandments donated by private organizations.

Pleasant Grove denied the Summum’s request, citing a city requirement that permanent displays in the park either be directly related to city history or be donated by a group with longstanding community ties. (The Ten Commandments monument was donated by the Fraternal Order of Eagles.)

In the suit, the Summum contended the city violated its free speech rights by excluding its monument while allowing the Ten Commandments monument to be displayed in the park. After the district court denied the Summum’s request for a preliminary injunction, the 10th Circuit reversed with instructions to grant a preliminary injunction allowing the Summum to erect its monument in Pioneer Park.

The panel reached its decision after concluding the case implicated private speech in a public forum, not government speech. With regard to the type of forum implicated, the panel held that “the nature of the forum in this case is public” because a “city park” is “a traditional public forum.” Therefore, the panel reasoned, “the city’s restrictions on speech are subject to strict scrutiny” - a standard of review that the city’s denial of the Summum’s request would likely fail.

On free speech grounds, it seems, the conservatives have an easy and common sense rationale for denying the right of public display of the “seven aphorisms.” From the 10th Circuit’s decision:

In Graff v. City of Chicago, 9 F.3d 1309, 1314 (7th Cir. 1993), the
Seventh Circuit held that “[t]here is no private constitutional right to erect a structure on public property. If there were, our traditional public forums, such as our public parks, would be cluttered with all manner of structures.” (quotation and citation omitted).

In other words, official speech on government property ultimately belongs to (surprise surprise) the government.

Yet, the Establishment Clause — apparently not an issue in this case — is not about speech but religious rights, our unalienable rights to liberty and equality of conscience. And whereas the Free Exercise Clause invariably vindicates liberty rights, the EC often vindicates equality rights. In short, our constitutional system grants the Summum faith the same rights, no greater or lesser, that it does to traditional Judeo-Christian faiths.

One strong reason why I think America’s Founders were so concerned with grating equal rights to unorthodox, heretical faiths is that many of the key Founders were unorthodox heretics. They all came together in their belief that America was governed by a wise, inscrutable Providence. But on issues as basic as even the Ten Commandments, America, in principle, was founded to be as much about doubting that we had the right version of the Ten Commandments, as it was to be about living by the traditional version of the Decalogue.

That’s one reason why I believe on these public display of the Ten Commandments issue, whatever the technical proper constitutional result, the historical answer — what America, in principle, was founded to be all about — is display those heterodox, freethinking, non-traditional sentiments right next to the Ten Commandments. And display them proudly. And so I would display John Adams’ alternate Ten Commandments right next to the traditional ones.

John Adams writing to Thomas Jefferson, Nov. 15, 1813 doubts we have the right version of the Ten Commandments, indeed explicitly doubts the accuracy of the Bible’s text, and proposes an alternate version which might be the “authentic” Decalogue:

Among all your researches in Hebrew history and controversy, have you ever met a book the design of which is to prove that the ten commandments, as we have them in our Catechisms and hung up in our churches, were not the ten commandments written by the finger of God upon tables delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai, and broken by him in a passion with Aaron for his golden calf, nor those afterwards engraved by him on tables of stone; but a very different set of commandments?

[...]

1. Thou shalt not adore any other God. Therefore take heed not to enter into covenant with the inhabitants of the country; neither take for your sons their daughters in marriage. They would allure thee to the worship of false gods. Much less shall you in any place erect images.

2. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread, at the time of the month Abib; to remember that about that time, I delivered thee from Egypt.

3. Every first born of the mother is mine; the male of thine herd, be it stock or flock. But you shall replace the first born of an ass with a sheep. The first born of your sons shall you redeem. No man shall appear before me with empty hands.

4. Six days shalt thou labor. The seventh day thou shalt rest from ploughing and gathering.

5. The feast of weeks shalt thou keep with the firstlings of the wheat harvest ; and the feast of harvesting at the end of the year.

6. Thrice in every year all male persons shall appear before the Lord. Nobody shall invade your country, as long as you obey this command.

7. Thou shalt not sacrifice the blood of a sacrifice of mine, upon leavened bread.

8. The sacrifice of the Passover shall not remain till the next day.

9. The firstlings of the produce of your land, thou shalt bring to the house of the Lord.

10. Thou shalt not boil the kid, while it is yet sucking.

And the Lord spake to Moses: Write those words, as after these words I made with you and with Israel a covenant.

[...]

When and where originated our ten commandments? The tables and the ark were lost. Authentic copies in few, if any hands; the ten Precepts could not be observed, and were little remembered. If the book of Deuteronomy was compiled, during or after the Babylonian captivity, from traditions, the error or amendment might come in those.

So, in debating public display of Ten Commandments & American Founding, ask those on the pro-display issue what the 10th Commandment is. And reply, no it’s “Thou shalt not boil the kid, while it is yet sucking.” So sayeth John Adams. But in any event, I would support public display of these Ten Commandments, replete with Adams’ quotations doubting we have the right version of the Ten Commandments as written in the Bible.

As a matter of constitutional technicality the Summum folks may be in the wrong (or not). But what they are trying to do is as American as apple pie.

There are all kinds of variations of the phrase. One can substitute “conservative,” “small government,” “libertarian,” or “capitalist” for “free-market.” I’ve heard all of them. And the “government stepping up” part has taken a bunch of different forms, as panic induced philosophies tend to do. Nearly everyone has a brilliant scheme to defy gravity.

Often, a “but” in a sentence means you can disregard what came before it, and this is one of those instances. You’re not really a free-market conservative capitalist if you believe the government should bail-out businesses that failed. Call yourself what you want, but, at best, you’re a sunshine or fair weather free-marketer, and you resent how supply, demand, prices, and risk work. You think some person or committee should engineer a solution. There are words to describe that belief. They are “socialist,” “corporatist,” “central planner,” and even the out-dated but still very real “communist.”

Equally dispiriting are the folks who pretend to be deep, open-minded intellectuals, who ferret out ideology when they see it.

Many of these folks say ridiculous things like, “I’m a free-market guy, but this is no time for ideology. There’s a crisis and we must come together.” (Sometimes, political-speak can be pornographic.)

Others say, “Oh, you’re just being ideological,” and they mean that pejoratively.

It’s trendy to pick on those of us who have an ideology. It might even sound good, but far from demonstrating depth of character, it exposes a person without moorings. If your principles are only good in sunshine, than they’re not very good principles. Or worse, if you merely hold those principles when its convenient, you are not a trustworthy person (at least, on the issue at question).

Right is right, and principles are most needed when fear creeps in and tries to overtake rationality. It’s been said that, “Hard cases make bad law.” Crisis-thinking is rarely one’s best thinking. Principles may be refined in the fire, but they need the cooling off period that reflection provides. Principles prepare us to respond, not the other way around.

Hardball delenda est. And the bailouts must end!

I will be pleased that we’ve broken the color barrier. I wasn’t sure it would happen in my lifetime.

I will be pleased to see the religious right lose. In fact I am already enjoying the fact that Palin is implicitly conceding the election already, trotting out the defeatist mantra, “It’s the mainstream media’s fault!” that will be their excuse for the next four years.

I will be pleased to see a president who at least gives the impression of being thoughtful and mature, qualities that have only rarely made an appearance in the past 16 years.

And given that Obama really did impress me on foreign policy in the first debate, I think I will be pleased that the right candidate won, because for me foreign policy is the president’s first, second, and third job.

And yet I remain depressed. I remember how hopeful I was when I learned that Austen Goolsbee is one of Obama’s economic advisers. Perhaps, I thought, Obama will listen. But lately he has been denouncing deregulation, blaming it for the current mess, and insisting that the era of deregulation has to end.

And I am deeply worried. Deregulation began in the Carter administration, and was continued by Reagan, Bush and Clinton. Deregulation is what opened up opportunities for entrepreneurialism that allowed the economy to boom for most of the past thirty years. And deregulation is clearly not the primary culprit of the current financial meltdown. If Obama is serious about re-regulating the economy, we should all prepare ourselves for lower standards of living–perhaps not dramatically lower, but lower than we have become accustomed to, and substantially lower than they would be if we stay committed to deregulation.

Why is is that people who have not studied economics have so much confidence in their understanding of the “problems” of free markets. People who couldn’t tell you which economist came up with the theory of comparative advantage, much less explain it, or define marginalism, truly believe they have a deep insight into the errors of economists.

I can only hope that the basics of deregulation–no more government fixing of prices and levels of competition for transportation, telecommunications, etc.–are now so standard that when Obama talks about re-regulation he just means requiring more reporting by banks and other financial institutions. It will be burdensome and costly, yes, but it wouldn’t be a fundamental turn back to Rooseveltian economic management.

That’s what I hope. But Obama has entirely too much faith in government for my comfort. This is a guy who’s spent most of his working life in the non-profit/governmental sector, working as a community organizer and as a politician. I don’t think being a community organizer is a bad thing, but I do think that Obama’s career has led him to think that non-profits and governments are the real source of most of the good things in our lives, the cause of better standards of living, rather than realizing that it is the for-profit sector that produces those things.

For-profits are the ones who produce most of the medicines that keep us alive (I, for one, would be dead at least twice-over if not for profit-makers in the medical and pharmaceutical industries), that it is the for-profit sector that supplies our homes, our food, our cars, our clothes, the computers on which we blog, the sofa on which my wife is presently and pleasantly stretched out watching the television made by for-profits showing a program produced by for-profits. As the nights get cool up here in Michigan, the heater, made by for-profits and fueled by natural gas drilled for and refined by for-profits, keeps my children warm as they snuggle under blankets made by for-profits on top of their comfortable mattresses made by for-profits.

That is what I am not sure Obama understands. He doesn’t understand that economics derived from moral philosophy–that it is the science of how to improve humanity’s material well-being, not a science about how to get rich through greed and treachery. And that’s why I, as the election approaches, and as I cheer each time another state swings towards Obama, I daily become every more depressed.

If you asked 100 educated “liberal elites” why they would never even consider voting Republican, it’s not because those mean conservatives told them to go away. It’s not even economics. It’s the social issues. For many liberals (myself included), the dealbreaker is the enthusiastic and nasty embrace of social views that we find repellant and stupid.

Don’t get me wrong — there’s nothing about college that necessarily makes you a better or even smarter person — drunker, maybe, but not better. Instead, college forces you — often for the first time — to experience diversity. Many Americans meet their first gay friends in college. Or maybe they develop their first true friendships with people of different ethnicities or religions or ideologies. I, for instance, was quite fascinated to learn that not everybody in the United States celebrates Christmas — Rosh a Whata? (I was equally fascinated to learn that some families celebrate it with adult beverages — next life, Catholic).

Anyway, once you’ve had these experiences, it’s beyond disgusting to see, for instance, the rabid gay-bashing of 2004, or the immigrant-bashing of 2005, or the “Barack Hussein Obama” business, or the audacity of an idiot vice presidential candidate claiming that Obama “pals around” with terrorists — you know, people who murder Americans. Urban educated Republicans don’t even try to defend this garbage, but instead are embarrassed by it — probably far more than they publicly acknowledge. Sometimes, though, the embarrassment spills out — see, e.g., David Brooks and David Frum.

In short, the GOP has made an unholy alliance with the mob — and now the long-term debt is coming due.

This was basically my trajectory — raised very conservative, went to college, met my first gay person there (which was me!), and grew increasingly repelled by the Republican approach to social issues. After it became glaringly apparent that they didn’t support the free market either, there just wasn’t any reason at all to call see myself as a Republican, and I doubt I ever will again.

So, also, perhaps in some alternative universe where politicians are at least occasionally honest, there may be a president or a cabinet secretary or Federal Reserve chairman or maybe a candidate or two for high elected office who are admitting that the state has no more direct control over the economy than it has over the weather, that its interference typically does more harm than good, and that the business cycle has no more been repealed by act of congress or presidential edict than gravity or the value of pi.

Yes, there was a (long lasting) housing bubble and, yes, it has now burst. But there really is real estate with real, albeit less, value underlying most of those so-called toxic debts. And that is unlike, by the way, the dot.com bust of some years ago when many of the underlying “assets” were nothing but smoke and mirrors. Goods and services are still being produced and consumed notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Market says they’re all worth much less than they were a year ago. As far as underlying value goes, Mr. Market was wrong when he was making extravagant offers on those houses and stocks and he’s just as wrong in his undervaluing of those same assets today. The fair market price of your house is probably lower today than it was last year. Did the house or lot shrink or has the roof started leaking as a result?

Today’s real and immediate danger is the breakdown in the credit market. Ironically, the cure is probably going to result in significant inflation. That’s an evil, but not as great an evil as deflation and depression. Just as you and I need both short term and long term credit to smooth cash flow blips and purchase long term capital goods, so do the businesses that provide those goods and services. If lenders are afraid to lend (or, worse yet, if they become convinced that their assets will best increase in value merely by remaining idle in a deflationary economy), producers will soon become unable to continue producing.

All because of fear. If belief in the economy is at some deep level irrational (and, truth be told, it is), disbelief in the economy is not only irrational, it’s suicidal. I have no idea whither the economy in the short or even medium run at this point. I do, however, know this: if in our fear we decide to commit collective economic suicide, it will have been an assisted suicide with politicians and journalists playing Dr. Kevorkian.

Here’s the advice I was offering: Oppose the bailout.

For the “maverick” in this race, it would’ve been the most “mavericky” thing he could’ve done. But he went along with the insider establishment — which, btw, is his real standard operating procedure.

For the House GOP it would’ve been a return to the apex of the Gingrich-led revolution. The leaders of that revolution, Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, both no longer in the House, opposed the bailout.

But the Dow has gone down 1900 points since the bailout. The S&P has declined more than 250 points. GM and Ford are teetering.

And now, the same media that drank the bailout Kool-Aid — that run virtual infomercials in support of it — is beginning to question (just beginning) whether or not it was the right move.

So is the public. And nowhere is this sentiment more strongly represented than in the markets. People are running for cover. “We’re from the government and we’re here to help.” Those are scary words that are spooking the market.

And the GOP, by sticking to their alleged principles, they could’ve won in November.

Yesterday Downsize DC’s James Leroy Wilson deftly illustrated that these principles are only rhetoric — that the Republicans and Democrats work together all the time.

No one in the leadership of the Republican party, with the possible exception of Mike Pence (R-IN), represented the majority position according to the polls — and now, according to the market.

That’s just dumb.

Yet no one is making that point on Hardball yet (but they will, because I keep saying…) Hardball delenda est. And the bailouts must stop!

P.S. Plug: If you feel you’ve lost your voice because the Rs and Ds are in lock-step on these bailouts, DownsizeDC.org has opposed the Big Bailout, and we’ll oppose the next one, and the one after that. Please join us. Sign Up.

That video was SO 1983. If it were only 1983 again.

The story is a $400,000 resort trip for AIG employees, which occurred after the taxpayer bailout.

This was an incentive trip. It’s not significant.

Let me illustrate why in this way . . .

Let’s say you work at Big Company X. Maybe you work in the plant, manufacturing widgets. Your normal volume is 8,000, but the company tells you that if you’ll up your product volume to 10,000 for a certain period, they’ll pay you a $5,000 bonus. Or maybe you sell the widgets. You normally sell 8,000 widgets, but the company tells you that if you up your sales rate to 10,000 for a certain period, they’ll pay you a $5,000 bonus, on top of your commission.

The numbers aren’t important. The profit you’ve made for the company is worth $5,000 to you. You work your tail off, and you achieve the goal.

Weeks go by, and you know this bonus is coming. But then, you arrive at work on the day you are to get your bonus and the company tells you, “We’re under criminal investigation.” It turns out that top management was cooking the books and taking large bonuses. “We don’t want to look bad so you don’t get your bonus. Please get back to work.”

Would you be mad? Would you say, “You promised?” Would you feel defrauded? After all, you didn’t make those cooking the books decisions, you just worked your rear-end off. And this is the thanks you get. Your spouse was already planning on how to spend the money!

Well, that is EXACTLY what Democrats in Congress and the mainstream media are harping on. And it’s total B.S. The folks who won this trip didn’t leverage the company or make the disastrous management decisions. They sold its products. And they did an incredible job and this incentive was promised to them.

Companies use incentives all the time. It improves performance and yields excellence. Now that the federal government is getting involved, perhaps programs like this will be legislated away. Performance won’t be maximized. Is that what we really want?

Be mad at the right thing — the taxpayer bailout. $400,000 wouldn’t even begin to solve AIG’s problems. Those employees earned their bonus. It was Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson that decided to save AIG. Be mad at them. Very mad.

Hardball delenda est. And bailouts must stop!

Well, President Bush, who has given pep talks himself, came out and gave a presentation this morning that lived up to the promise of a train wreck. The Dow was at about -75 to -80 as he began to speak. When he concluded, it was at -190. As I write this, a half-hour later, it’s -250.

Why?

Well, I think the main reason that the market declines every time a major government figure opens his mouth is that the grassroots investing public recognizes that they just don’t get it. George W. Bush said that the reason this is all happening is a decline in the housing market that led to a credit freeze — lenders don’t trust borrowers; banks lack confidence in each other.

Bzzzt. That is not THE reason. We now know this entire crisis was caused by government.

And no political leaders are saying that. When the investment markets hear politicians say our meddling, regulating, and subsidizing of bad practices caused this, and we intend to stop and reverse course, you will see the markets go up. No major figure on either side of the aisle has the ability to even consider saying such a thing, let alone the courage to follow-through.

And the market players see that, and they’re scared by it.

But each of these pronouncements has a new revelation that scares the hell out of investors. And this presentation was no different.

The President suggested that those who give advice that pull down a company’s stock, will be prosecuted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, if it’s found they profited from that advice. I was watching the speech with the Dow counter in the bottom corner of the screen. Remember, the President started at -75 to -80. The market had already dipped as far down as the -140s in the early moments of his speech. But then it came back to -75 to -80.

And then the President threatened investment advisers with prosecution. The Dow immediately dropped -120 and throughout the rest of his talk and in the time that followed, it has not come back above that line.

Now, the SEC probably couldn’t get a conviction in most of these instances, but it could make an investment advisors life very difficult and cost them a lot of money.

First it was the short selling ban. Now it’s no stock-adverse advice permitted. The SEC has a “Hotel California” philosophy — you buy into the market any time you like, but you can never sell. We’re in Never-Never land here.

Finally, the President promised assistance to the borrowers who were defaulting on their mortgages. Politicians rarely recognize when they contradict themselves. Here’s a whopper: If the central problem is mortgage defaults and the euphemistic “credit freeze,” then you want to get this over as soon as possible — that means permitting defaults to clear. You don’t want to be forced, at gunpoint by the government, to loan to the very same people who’ve stopped paying, on the very same property they’re presently willing to default on. You want to find new and better customers.

And this rescue from foreclosure is not necessary! For the government, the only way to fund such a scheme, if they’re unwilling to tax (they are) and you have a liquidity crisis (so you don’t want to compound it by borrowing) is to monetize — PRINT MONEY! Inflation is being asked to save the day.

But there have always been people willing to gobble up houses at dimes on the dollar, make whatever repairs are necessary, and then either rent or flip them. Some even agree to give people facing foreclosure bridge loans and assume a second mortgage position that guarantees they can buy up the property before it goes to auction should the borrower default. Private money won’t arrive until they know they can complete the deal conveniently and profitably. But with the government steamrolling into the rescue, these private money investors will get run over, and they know it.

So the private capital sits on the sidelines. People are cashing out and holding on, waiting. And they’re not waiting for a turnaround. They’re waiting for the government to stop making the problem worse.

BTW, the Dow is -330 as I conclude this piece. Thanks George!

Hardball delenda est. And bailouts must stop!

I’ve never been a big fan of John McCain, but I always thought he’d be a good president. I’ve never forgiven him for McCain-Feingold, the worst congressional evisceration of the First Amendment in decades, but that seemed beside the point compared to his foreign policy expertise. I often said there’s no way I’d ever vote for the son-of-a-bitch for senator, but I’d sure vote for him for president.

One of the things I liked was, as my friend Jeff said last night, that once upon a time McCain seemed willing to lose the presidency in order to stick to his principles. But that no longer seems true. I can forgive flipflops on policy–a person who never changes their mind on a policy is a person whose mind is irredeemably closed–but what McCain has done is somethinng quite different. He has, over the past several years, utterly rejected his opposition to Bush and seemingly adopted every failed Bush policy in a desperate attempt to achieve the presidency in what is self-evidently his last remaining chance. If McCain would just come out and admit that invading Iraq was a mistake, but one that we can’t just walk away from until we’ve set it right, I might admire him again. But instead he continues to insist that Iraq was ground zero in the war on terror back in 2003. And although he once opposed Bush’s tax cuts, instead of now saying, “We’ve cut taxes enough, no more until we get the budget in balance,” I could resurrect the respect that has dwindled. But instead he says we need ever more tax cuts, pretending that by itself will revive the economy. But as he’s so openly admitted, he knows next to nothing about economics.

And then there’s his pandering to the Christian conservatives, the group I most despise in this country (because they combine their fascist-leaning ideology with an unabashedly revelatory certainty). When McCain spoke at Liberty University, I didn’t mind. Of course he had to butter them up a bit–that’s just politics. I didn’t believe he’d give them anything more than lip service until he selected a vice-presidential candidate who’s only political qualification is her indisputable membership in the revelatory right-wing. Given his age and infirmity, that was not just a politically cynical move, but one that said, “Damned to the future of this country, as long as I get to be president.”

On top of that, McCain’s increasingly obvious hatred of Obama is showing. McCain is so obviously desperate to be president, so aware that this is his last chance and that he’s not going to get what he’s been chasing for so long, that he can’t bring himself to look at Obama without a sneer and intense bitterness in his eyes. His campaign rhetoric and ads have gotten worse, pandering to the worst instincts of the rabble. Most egregious is his failure to rein in Palin as she incites her crowds to call Obama a terrorist and a traitor. The man who once would not sacrifice his principles, or so he said, to win the White House, has engaged in the lowest form of campaigning possible–impugning his opponent as a traitor to his country. It’s the lowest, most despicable, type of campaigning because it also implicates every Obama supporter in this country as a traitor. I’m no longer an Obama supporter either, but a lot of my friends are, and I’m sick and tired of Palin and her crowd calling my friends anti-American.

If there’s anyone McCain should be angry at, it’s George W. Bush. Had he not bungled nearly everything so badly for the past eight years, McCain would probably win easily.

Might he overcome all this and be a good president if, by some miracle, he wins the election? No, I don’t think so. He needs the presidency too badly, as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon did. He’s become a $10 crack whore, and his drug is the oval office. That tends to create a certain paranoia, a desperation to be unquestioned and unchecked in the office. It is entirely possible that if McCain had won in 2000, he would have been an outstanding president. Although he voted to approve the use of force in Iraq, I don’t think there’s any reason to believe he would, as president, have initated the invasion himself. I think he would have remained focused on Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden, and we’d be safer today. But he missed the golden ring, and has grown increasingly resentful and lustful, and that kind of president is a ticking time bomb.