The seven days before Oct. 1 made up the most grippingly dangerous week in American financial history. Everyone,the president, the Fed chairman, the rest of us,was groping in the dark. The crisis’ magnitude was unknown because its scope was unimaginable.
But when we needed confident competence, top leaders in Washington failed. They bickered and backstabbed,not privately, but publicly. TV and the net amplified it
all.
The catalyst was John McCain’s sense of duty, which, he said, drove him to suspend his campaign and return to Washington.
McCain tells us he’s built his life around that sense of duty. Take McCain at his word or not, but ask yourself if you respect the Democratic leaders’ reactions:
Barney Frank, the Democrat’s powerful House banking committee chairman demeaned McCain, saying he “set himself up to take credit for something that is in the process of happening without him.”
Mighty Mouse
“I was afraid (of) his dropping in here, like Andy Kaufman’s Mighty Mouse,’here I am to save the day!'” Frank said.
He shot a dig at McCain’s running mate, too, when Frank suggested, “We ask him to make Sarah Palin available to give us her expertise.”
Frank accused McCain of trying to tank the deal.
“This is McCain at the last minute getting House Republicans to undermine the (Treasury Secretary Henry) Paulson approach,” he said.
So, one day, Frank attacks McCain for taking credit for a deal. Then, on the next, he slams McCain for attempting to kill it.
Reid’s Reaction
Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, too, hated the idea that McCain might get props for brokering an agreement after the all-hands meeting at the White House. He hissed, “I would suggest that anyone in that meeting (who) tried to understand what John McCain said in the meeting, couldn’t.”
“John McCain did nothing to help. He only hurt the process,” he said.
On Monday, the day of the big House
vote, Nancy Pelosi slammed Republicans,just as she was insisting that they vote with her.
“They claim to be free-market advocates,” the speaker of the House said, “when it’s really an anything-goes mentality: no regulation, no supervision, no discipline.”
The vote failed. Investors in the stock market lost $1.2 trillion that day.
But, here’s what Frank should have said publicly when he heard McCain was coming to town: “This nation is on the edge of its deepest financial breakdown. We don’t know how it will turn out. Anyone who wants to work to find a solution is welcome on Capitol Hill.”
Reid could have said this after that White House session: “Yes, it was a tough meeting. No, the Senator didn’t say much. Maybe he was more interested in listening than talking.”
And, just before the House vote, Nancy Pelosi could have said, “Of course, we couldn’t disagree more about how we got here. But today, Democrats and Republicans together will do what they hope is right for American people.”
Eisenhower Story
During the first debate, McCain told the story of Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of the Allied Forces in Normandy. He bore the brutal burden of the world for six months as he planned an invasion that he knew could be ruined the next day. He held a letter in his pocket that would be ready if he lost that world, which read: “Our landings have failed and I have withdrawn the troops. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.”
Can you imagine, during World War II, a senior Republican saying that Franklin D. Roosevelt was sending boys to war to “get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement,” as longtime Democrat Congressman Pete Stark said of George Bush?
Can you imagine Sen. Howard Baker, Republican leader during the Carter administration, telling a group of visiting high schoolers the president was a “loser,” as Harry Reid did about his president?
Different Today
Here’s what we’ve lost in the 50 years between Eisenhower and Reid: Leaders who won’t rage with every small and vile impulse that courses through their loins. Leaders who equate dignity with restraint. Leaders who will shut up and do their jobs.
So there was America in September, one step from panic, the whole world looking on, and, in the Congress, what we had for leaders was children: Frank, Reid and Pelosi.
Since the founding of the Republic, Washington, like any center of power, has churned with ambition and jealousy. That’s nothing new.
But Washington is named for the old general and president, and those who knew him were quite humbled by a man whose moral intensity compelled him to chain the petty instincts we all share, for dignity’s sake, and to better serve others.
For most of two centuries, the city felt a sense of debt to Washington’s example. Not today. The best way to honor Washington now is to take his name off the city until the day when his character returns.
Michael D. Capaldi is a partner in the business law firm of Spach, Capaldi & Waggaman LLP in Newport Beach and chairman emeritus of the Lincoln Club of Orange County.
