Two parallel lines are being drawn with their paths due to intercept in November, as the election season heats up and consumers begin to feel the economic pinch of higher oil prices and the subprime mortgage crisis. One line is that of political events. The other is that of the economy. Where they meet is in our pocketbook.
Washington is coming to the rescue. God help us all, as the proposed overhaul of the fincial industry's oversight is almost certain to have significant repercussions along the way. It's not that we are condoning theft by corporations. It's that when Washington decides to fix things, it often goes wrong.
Look at Sarbanes-Oxley, and the exodus of U.S. jobs and capital as the increased red tape made it nearly impossible to do business in the U.S.
Next, we look at the Democrat side of the election. The left wants Mrs. Clinton to get out of the race, so that they can concentrate on turning Mr. Obama into the poster child for fixing all of America's problems.
And Mrs. Clinton's circle of friends is growing smaller. The Bosnia sniper incident, has yet to have Gate added to it as a modifier. But it surely qualifies. The right's pundits are having a field day, and the polls are starting to show that Obama is gaining as Hillary implodes.
Dick Morris, who is well known to dislike Mrs. Clinton, in a recent column basically described her as a serial liar, noting: "Hillary Clinton’s made-from-whole-cloth fantasy about the perils of her trip to Bosnia was no unique foray into a world of make-believe accomplishments. She’s been doing that for a long time."
Peggy Noonan, also a well known conservative describes the Bosnia airport story as a defining point, noting that if you don't "get" Mrs. Clinton by now, you never will. According to Noonan: "That's what the Bosnia story was about. Her fictions about dodging bullets on the tarmac -- and we have to hope they were lies, because if they weren't, if she thought what she was saying was true, we are in worse trouble than we thought -- either confirmed what you already knew (she lies as a matter of strategy, or, as William Safire said in 1996, by nature) or revealed in an unforgettable way (videotape! Smiling girl in pigtails offering flowers!) what you feared (that she lies more than is humanly usual, even politically usual)." Maureen Dowd, not exactly a right wing journalist, was not so kind to the senator from New York, either, writing that the Democrats are turning Mrs. Clinton into "Lady Voldemort."
Meanwhile, according to the International Herald Tribune, Senator John McCain, the Republican in waiting "has yet to sign up one critical constituency: the big-money people who powered the Bush fund-raising machine."
All this high profile wrangling among those vying to be the next president is clearly unsettling, whether the polls are documenting it, or not.
Think about it, the choices for those who will be running the world's biggest nuclear arsenal are what are being described as a "serial liar," an "inexperienced guy," and a guy who "gets no respet," and can't seem to get big money behind him. Who are these people, Mrs. Tommy Flanagan, the water boy who got to coach the team in the Super Bowl, and Rodney Dangerfield?
Making matters even more daunting is the economic reality of shrinking house values, fear of job loss, and most frightening of all, a Congress and a president in waiting, whoever that turns out to be, that in concert feel as if they have to "fix" things.
No wonder consumer spending fell in February, despite increasing personal income. And no wonder the stock market, despite making what could be a tradeable bottom has no apparent pep.
Conclusion
Burning issues, and causes and effects are running rampant. And not the least of which is who is going to run the country, and how they are going to affect our pocketbooks.
For at the end of the policy road is always your pocketbook and this columnist's. We are the ones who foot the bill for the ideological whims, and the pork barrell appetites of the folks we elect. And this crop of whims and potential bacon is as uncertain as any we've ever seen, since gosh, so much has gone wrong lately.
Frankly, we're quaking in our boots, as we can feel our hard earned money oozing its way into a dark vortex of who knows what.
That sucking sound is no longer the sound of jobs leaving the U.S. Now, it's the sound of Washington's vacuum cleaner, gearing up to harvest its latest, and biggest set of tax hikes in a long time. |
