Well, at least we’re no longer debating makeup tips for swine.
Or squinting to find flag lapel pins. Or making old-man prostate jokes. Or dusting family trees for Muslim fingerprints.
Suddenly, we have a bona fide financial crisis that could actually decide a presidential race that has been, as usual, more about personality than policy.
The crisis got so big last week that President Bush actually pre-empted “Dancing With The Stars” to talk about it, ensuring that most Americans now know we’re in the midst of some kind of calamity. (Note to the president: If you’re trying to avoid a run on the banks, don’t break into a show people actually watch to tell Americans we’re in a financial crisis. Pre-empt “Nightline” instead.)
So, we’ll finally have an election that could live up to the moniker “The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime,” and one that could turn on an issue rather than on a personality quirk.
Yet I find no comfort in that.
If you believe the performances of our two leading men in this unfolding drama have been above par, you may feel differently. But I wonder if the electorate might get a serious case of buyer’s remorse.
With the tenor in Washington so sour, Democrat and Republican voters this spring voted for change, change, change. Democrats voted for a change from the Clinton years, and Republicans opted for change by heralding the guy who had been shunned by the party brass.
But along the way, voters also bypassed experience and chose two candidates who, up to now, seem to know little about the economy.
President Bush neatly teed up the crisis in his deer-in-the-headlights primetime address Wednesday, saying “our entire economy is in danger.” Then he invited both Barack Obama and John McCain to a White House powwow to make it all better.
The idea of Bush bringing together McCain (who famously professed last fall to not know much about the economy and then proved it just a few days ago by saying the fundamentals of our economy are strong) and Obama (who was for his tax hike before he was against it) did little to settle my nervous stomach.
The economic crisis should be Obama’s moment to gain some traction in this race. He hasn’t had any since he walked off the set of Barackopolis that final night in Denver and awoke to find Sarah Palin nipping at his heels.
He was gaining an edge in the polls late last week, but neither man has emerged as the economic leader we need.
In just the past week, we’ve seen Obama’s indecisiveness and inexperience as he’s stumbled around for answers, and we’ve witnessed McCain’s rash decisions and explosive temper. His strange, visceral call for the SEC chief’s firing even led conservative columnist George Will to say: “It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?”
The country needs a leader who’s calm in crisis and can explain to us what happened, and how it can be fixed without gouging folks who did nothing but go to work and pay their bills and taxes.
Bush last week looked spooked and ready to retire to the ranch.
We need the truth. We can take it. But will one of the candidates deliver it?
We may in the end decide it’s much easier to pick our presidents based on who we’d rather watch a ballgame with because so far, they’re striking out on the main issue of the election: the economy.
Editorial page editor Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com.
