ShoutyBear: Politics. Foreign Affairs. Zarf.

[UPDATE 7:01. I take the part about this maybe being a good idea back. An "economic 9/11" is still not 9/11. Plus everyone needs to quit pretending that any of this is a surprise.]

[UPDATE 3:10. McCain is "suspending" his campaign in order to come back to Washington and do his day job. That means "working with" the Obama campaign and possibly postponing their scheduled Friday-night debate. Is this McCain 1.0 or McCain 2.0? It seems like a good idea, but it's hard not to feel a little cynical about Shakey McMaverick these days.]

Why, that’s just so… so… adorable.

From Moon Rising Over Kilimanjaro

President Bush is going to interrupt TV broadcasts at 9 p.m. tonight to assure Americans that the economy will be OK and scold lawmakers for not passing the $700 billion federal bailout package the second he asked them to. (The nerve.) AP reports: ”Press secretary Dana Perino said the president wants to tell the American people how the crisis affects them and help them understand the depth of the problem.”

Yeah… only the American people have been fretting about the sky falling for at least a couple of years.

In 2006, when the Dow was breaking records, Americans had a mostly negative outlook on the economy even while many expressed confidence in their personal financial situations. Now they’re down about everything. Meanwhile, the White House seemed only interested in boosterism until very recently. Bush now acknowledging the economic realities non-wealthy Americans are facing, which they blame him for, sort of makes him the Ike Turner of presidents.

The question is if the American public is 1970s Tina Turner or 1980s Tina Turner. (Yeah, I know. I’d rethink this if I had time.) Bush had high negatives and low credibility, but so does Congress. I’m inclined to believe most Americans appreciate the gravity of the current fiscal crisis and would prefer lawmakers pass a well-thought-out solution later rather than what Bush wants today. But good luck on getting a reasonably intelligent deal done during an election year. From AP again: “Some Democrats expressed concern that they would side with an unpopular President Bush, only to have Republican presidential candidate John McCain oppose the measure and try to ride his opposition to victory over Barack Obama. So far, neither McCain nor Obama has indicated how they would vote on the measure.”

Great. There is something obviously wacky (not to mention possibly unconstitutional) about putting an unelected political appointee — Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson — in near-absolute control of that $700 billion. Hammering out the details and reaching compromise will take time — time partisan lawmakers feel they don’t have. It’s times like these when nonpartisans (of which I, as an equal-opportunity hater, count myself) become acutely aware of the insanity of American politics. Clearly I’d rather be here than, say, North Korea. But asking lawmakers to be intelligent and cautious when handling such a gigantic disbursement of taxpayer money isn’t unreasonable, either.