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When the history of the 2008 election is written by someone with whom I agree, I predict it will become commonly accepted that, had John McCain picked Mitt Romney instead of former Governor Sarah Palin, McCain would have won. I am not writing this because I know it will aggravate both the left and the right, though that is certainly an added attraction. I am writing it because I believe it is absolutely true.

Whatever her political future may now be, Sarah Palin’s selection by McCain is right up there with IBM’s decision to let Microsoft supply the original operating system for the IBM PC. Commonly referred to as the “Trillion Dollar Mistake,” IBM’s decision is the closest parallel to the one made by Senator McCain. IBM traded for a quick entry into the new market pioneered by Apple, Atari and others and was rewarded with the loss of a market roughly equal to everything else it had. John McCain traded for a slight bump in the polls and an injection of enthusiasm from the Republican base at the expense of all the credibility he had as a potential national leader. Once the wider public became fully aware of former Governor Palin’s capacities, it was no longer possible to trust McCain’s judgment and, for some, no longer possible to believe he put patriotism above personal ambition.

I know that last statement is hard to read. It was hard to write, for there is no doubt John McCain is a great American patriot. Still, there is no justification for his selection of Mrs. Palin other than he became convinced she could somehow help him win.

How much different it would have been had he selected Romney. I am told that the Republican base never really trusted Romney, believing him to be one of those damnable Republicans in the Rockefeller mold. I am told there might well have been a floor fight over the nomination of Romney as VP, maybe even a walkout. I am told the thinking was, had there been a rebellion from the far right of the base, the ticket would have been irreparably crippled.

Perhaps, that view is correct. However, it is equally as likely, as the race progressed in an environment of the terrifying collapse of the national and world economy, Romney’s presence on the ticket would have been extremely attractive. It would have been a race to November, but Romney would have been the only candidate on either ticket capable of speaking authoritatively to the American people on the one subject uppermost in everyone’s mind.

Had McCain made Romney his pick, and had that ticket squeaked out a win in the election, would it have made any difference in how the effort to revive the economy has been conducted? Again, perhaps not. First, this would have depended upon Romney’s ability to get McCain’s trust and to get management of the economy in his portfolio. I am told that after the bruising primaries, the two men did not and do not like one another very much. Never the less, McCain admitted during the primaries that he did not know much about the economy and Romney did execute some major league, really world class, ass kissing during the run up to the VP selection. Had McCain given it some real thought, he would have realized Romney was the man best suited for the role and that, after the election, had McCain still borne a grudge, he would have been free, with Romney as the VP, to torture the poor bastard to his heart’s content. Clearly, for McCain, it was a win-win.

But, McCain did not do the ballsy, smart thing, he did the ballsy, stupid thing. What if he had done the right thing and he followed that up with allowing Romney to run the economy? I believe things would be very different. Romney comes from a financial services background, just like Bernanke, Geithner, Lawrence, Paulson and all the rest of the gang of thieves and bunglers who designed and continue to run the show. However, Romney also comes from a manufacturing background. He knows that somewhere along the line somebody has to actually make something and convince somebody else to buy it and use it.

This last concept is one that completely escapes the masters of our economic universe. The Paulson gang, so called because the gnarly bastard devised the bailout approach to economic policy and nothing has changed since, knows nothing but finance. They believe and still believe, the financial system is the epicenter of everything and that, having saved it, they have done good.

And save it they did. Of course, if I owe a couple of trillion dollars more than I have and you, the benevolent tax payer, give me that amount and guarantee my credit for a couple of trillion more (over $23 trillion by the count of the Obama administration’s TARP watch dog) then I am probably going to be just fine. Hell, I might even retire and quit doing what I had been doing when I went broke.

Unfortunately, giving me all that money won’t do you much good. That, of course, really isn’t my problem, and, hey, good luck.

In a nutshell, the this is the Bush/Obama economic recovery plan. Give all the damn money to the bankers and, once they are sated and secure, maybe they will spend some money and it will result in us being able to work for them or borrow from them. Maybe they will let us cut the grass.

This sounds a little like the Reagan “trickle down” economy, with the added touch that the money they are trickling down on us was our damn money to begin with. I bet David Stockman is pissed he did not think of that. All he ever did was demand tax cuts for the wealthy so they could spend it as they chose. Stockman never had quite the cohones to demand the tax payers give money to the rich so the rich could decide how to trickle it down. That took guts. Whatever else you might say about Paulson, when he walks in a room you have to be able to hear his balls clank.

I do not believe Romney would have countenanced this madness. I think he would have insisted that the money go to the sectors of the economy that actually make things and employ persons who don’t have an MBA. Further, I think John McCain would have let him do it as long as Romney continued to osculate publicly upon the Presidential derriere.

I am not sure what form it would have taken. I don’t know if Romney could have moved McCain to some grand research driven reform of the economy like Kennedy’s space program, but he might have done so. No doubt, under a Romney economy, the labor unions would have suffered a mortal blow, not a good thing, but they may well have received the same from Obama but just don’t know it yet.

Well, it does not matter now. Palin was the choice and McCain went down in flames, metaphorically speaking, for the second time in his life. Paulson’s massive transfer of money from the middle and poorer classes of Americans to the richest of Americans proceeds unabated. Indeed, just yesterday Paul Krugman in the “New York Times” called for another round of drinks for the funds soaked sots at the bar. This while another seventy-five billion in your and my debt is to be floated upon the world market this very week, even as I write. This while the Obama administration takes steps necessary to shift politically on health care policy so to claim as a victory whatever crap emerges from Congress.

I hear Romney is thinking of making another run at the Presidency. I do not believe it will be worth his effort. I suspect he will not gain any traction this time around. If for no other reason than the Republican Party is now a radical fringe organization no longer capable of nominating a center right candidate, Romney is cooked. It is a shame, for the nation needs a sane Republican Party capable of nurturing the careers of center right candidates. It is now the ideological captive of people like Bush and Palin and Gingrich, people incapable of governing in the interest of the entire nation, even if they do attain office.

They do remain capable of bullying centrist Democrats. That they do exceptionally well. And, make no mistake, Obama is no leftist liberal and certainly no socialist. Obama would have to be paint to be more center of the road. That in itself isn’t so bad. Unfortunately, Obama is completely captivated by the money men. He, like they, think if the bankers, like the proverbial Momma, are happy then everybody’s happy.

Romney, who actually has done some things other than government and finance is, in this regard, different.  Obama and his team simply don’t know any better. It is too damn late to teach them without all the rest of us feeling real and lasting pain. Paulson, Obama and company are leading us into an economic Guantánamo. Money for the bankers, torture for the rest of us, what a deal.

1. Brenden says:

   August 10, 2009 at 6:55 pm

   I suppose as I continue to post on this forum I should dialogue in a more reserved tone out of deference to the lofty goals of this endeavor to cover Southern culture and politics — indeed a valuable enterprise. I do so with reservation because, as I mentioned, I believe the politically angry left prefers to emote than explain. And in those emotive bloviations lay far better refutations of the underlying premises than I, as a humble interlocutor, could ever hope to articulate. Thus, I confess to a bit of rage-mongering in order to extract a bit more unhinged blithering. But I expect these reservations are misplaced; that in the long run, you won’t be able to help yourselves anyway.

   In that spirit of reconciliation, I see MC has himself offered a ray of hope in his spirited defense of Romney. I agree: many conservatives, especially in my militant secular economic camp, were left scratching their heads over the Palin pick. Happily, she has ridden off into the sunset and voluntarily, inexplicably wrecked her future political career in the process. This angry right wing whacko in the wilderness issued a sigh of relief, though. Adios, Saracudda, we hardly knew ye. Don’t forget to switch parties on the way out. However, I disgree with MC on this assessment: “Palin was the choice and McCain went down in flames, metaphorically speaking, for the second time in his life.” McCain actually crashed three planes before the fateful wreck in Vietnam, making Palin his fifth tragic piloting error.

   As for the economic catastrophe, I would choose Hurricane Katrina rather than Guantanamo as the appropriate politically-freighted iconoclastic metaphor. Like Katrina, the local authorities who had been responsible to shore up the community’s defenses decided, for decades preceeding the immanently predictable disaster, to fritter away necessary public money on political baubbles to favored constiuents. When the big one hit, the withered levies crumbled in a testament to collective incompetence. Similarly, Congress for decades incentivized (and forced) lenders to shovel tax-backed loans to questionable borrowers and then flooded the derivatives markets with mortgage-backed-securities whose loan-to-income multiples were higher than the applicant’s credit score. When those mortgage holders defaulted — SURPRISE!! — those taxpayer guarantys flooded into the abyss along with many conservatively-invested retirement funds.

   Of course, Democratics were at the helm of both the levy boards and Fannie Mae, and now that helm of of the USS American Economy as we go surfs up with the Tidy Man. Whenever our “radical fringe organization” gets itself into trouble with the voters, the Democratics unfailingly serve up a bed-wetting incompetitent who thinks the answer to a once-in-a-Century global financial catastophe is a multi-trillion-dollar, shovel-ready sack of hope. And free health care. So Romney will probably win by a landslide in 2012 if Hillary doesn’t switch parties before then.

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2. Dude says:

   August 10, 2009 at 8:13 pm

   I’ve been saying this since the Palin pick was announced- should’ve gone Romney. I don’t know if I’d say that would ensure a McCain presidency, but it would’ve made it closer.

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3. C Smith says:

   August 11, 2009 at 2:01 pm

   Brenden with your knowledge of the english language you should sign up to contribute to The Dew and voice your own ideas instead of sitting back and snipeing other ideas. Put yourself in the middle of the meadow open to all “pot-shots” that might not agree with you.

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4. Mike Copeland says:

   August 12, 2009 at 12:13 pm

   “In that spirit of reconciliation…” Brenden, I must say when you decide to reconcile with someone you do it in style. Again, thanks for reading and particularly thanks for the correction re: the actual number of flame outs Senator McCain has survived. I think we can all agree, he is a remarkable man.

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