John McCain Was Misled? That Presumes He Was Paying Attention

Oh yes, the hapless John McCain. Wait… He was hapless. When the TARP boondoggle hit DC, Senator McCain heroically charged back to DC and did precisely …nothing. It was embarrassing. It lost him the election.

Senator McCain is getting push back from Tea Partiers on TARP. I cut him and the other who voted for it, because it was a complicated, difficult subject. Ultimately, my own decision was to say “no, it’s wrong” simply on the old adage “when in doubt, don’t.” It was too complex, with too many bad consequences. That’s not to say there wouldn’t have been bad consequences had TARP not passed. I’m pretty sure there would have been.

But for McCain to claim he was deceived? Well, that strains credulity. Here’s what was said:

In response to criticism from opponents seeking to defeat him in the Aug. 24 Republican primary, the four-term senator says he was misled by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. McCain said the pair assured him that the $700 billion Troubled Asset
Relief Program would focus on what was seen as the cause of the financial crisis, the housing meltdown.

“Obviously, that didn’t happen,” McCain said in a meeting Thursday with The Republic’s Editorial Board, recounting his decision-making during the critical initial days of the fiscal crisis. “They decided to stabilize the Wall Street
institutions, bail out (insurance giant) AIG, bail out Chrysler, bail out General Motors. . . . What they figured was that if they stabilized Wall Street – I guess it was trickle-down economics – that therefore Main Street would be fine.”

Nearly 15 months later, commercial lenders still are in shaky condition and the commercial real-estate industry is in trouble, he said. On Friday, President Barack Obama announced $1.5 billion in funding for new measures to help Arizona and four other states hit hard by the tanked housing market and by joblessness.

But McCain stopped short of calling the TARP a mistake.

The difficulty for all incumbents who voted for this monstrosity is that people still hate it and it still doesn’t look like it’s done anything of value outside of keeping some banks solvent for a short amount of time.

I don’t know the way for a politician to get out of the responsibility of voting for this bill. Everyone hated it then and they hate it now.

Claiming that he was misled won’t fly. The bad part of this vote for McCain, is that it reminds everyone how aimless he looked when he stopped campaigning and went to Washington to “save” the day. Not a good memory.

Michelle Malkin sums up:

He blew it on TARP.

Blew it on the auto bailout.

Blew it on the mortgage entitlement bailout.

Blew it on the AIG bailout.

Blew it on amnesty.

Blew it on campaign finance.

Blew it on global warming.

In short: McCain blows.

McCain is supposed to be a leader in the Republican party. In fact, he is a leader. That’s the problem.

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