Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

When a brooding, tentative, shaken McCain had his opportunity to talk about his economic beliefs and potential future remedies the best he could do was blurt out defensively that he was one of those in Washington who "warned about" problems in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

No, Senator McCain, you cite Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae when even you know, despite your honest admission that you knew nothing about economics, only to take back one of the few candid and honest statements of your presidential campaign, that the tragedy befalling the U.S. economy extends well beyond Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Senator, you have been in Washington over a generation, despite your current posture of appearing to have found our nation's Capitol sometime after Sarah Palin, and if we are looking for a root cause as well as a linchpin for your foundationless economic belief system the answer would lie with the chief executive you lauded while you failed to even mention George W. Bush.

That individual is Ronald Reagan.  This is the former California governor whose first impetus for public office was a committee of wealthy executives who later comprised what was termed his "kitchen cabinet."

It was this same Reagan who never saw an economic regulation he liked, that champion of excess whose operatives made that grand symbolic gesture of tearing out those solar energy collectors that Jimmy Carter, that president you and your free marketers ridiculed, had installed.  

This was the same Carter who warned that if excessive consumption and some form of balance between the public and private sectors were not maintained that disaster would ensue.

Yes, Senator, you were one of those who not only opposed the kind of regulation that could have saved America from its current calamity; you compiled a voting record to prove it.

When you proudly proclaimed your support of Ronald Reagan in last Friday's debate you provided a reminder to many of us to the real John McCain and what you have up your sleeve for the future, should you be elected, beginning with another one of those Bush style tax cuts that have spearheaded us toward a debt that will soon reach $10 trillion.

As boxing legend Joe Louis famously said, "You can run but you can't hide."

Remember that, Senator McCain.  

Your primary opponent but now supporter, multimillionaire Mitt Romney, put the regulation issue in perspective for the cheering throngs that would later respond to Sarah Palin as a virtual second coming.

Remember, Senator McCain, what Romney said about what you as president would do on the subject of economic regulation?

Romney said that you would get out a "weed whacker" and the 97% white Republican Convention delegates that you and the organizers apparently felt represented a cross section of America responded with the same roar that Rudy Guiliani received when he ridiculed Barack Obama's service as a "community organizer."

Senator McCain, the weed whacker reference is apt, but not in the context in which Romney used it.

The weed whacker should be figuratively administered by American voters to the McCain-Palin ticket in November's election.