Forwarding the Conversation

This week as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made their way to Capitol Hill to argue for the passage of their estimated 700 billion dollar package designed to stablize the financial markets what did we hear from our presidential candidates?

Who cares how many cars John McCain owns and what the hell does mum mean? We are in the midst of a financial crisis and all the campaigns can do is air negative ad after negative ad. Last week the Washington Post published a story titled “Recent Obama Ads More Negative Than Rival’s, Study Says.” The article goes on to explain that 77% of Obama’s ads were negative the week after the Republican National Convention while 56% of John McCain’s ads were negative. So, Obama airred more negative ads than John McCain. In total, 30 million dollars was spent between the two campaigns on ads with and it’s possible that almost 20 million of those dollars went to negative campaign advertisements. For me, it doesn’t matter who is airring more negative ads because a few weeks before the Democratic Convention it was the John McCain campaign who was tossing the bigger mud pies.

What matters right now is that in the midst of a financial crisis both campaigns have decided to pummel each other into the ground. At a time when America’s President is publicly taking a back-seat role to a member of his cabinet the only thing that the two men running for the highest office in the land can do is resort to petty attacks. America needs leadership and neither candidate is showing that they are capable of leading. This morning Obama made the statement that he may not even go to Washington to vote on the 700 billion dollar financial package if it looks like it’s a sure thing to pass. Senator Obama might not go to Washington to vote on what could be one of the most significant bills in United States history? What does that say about the way he will lead as President? John McCain has not yet committed to being in DC for the vote? What would it say to the country if neither Presidential candidate went to DC to vote on this bill?

At the same time that these ads are running Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, went on Meet the Press to talk about the crisis. As I watched I found myself saying to myself “man, he sounds presidential.” After I finished watching I went online to watch the latest statements from both candidates and was dissapointed. Neither sounded like a President attempting to address a crisis, they sounded like fools trying to figure out how to fill a sound-bite without saying anything at all. Bloomberg projected an heir of calm detachment. He seemed confident and at ease with the questions and he didn’t sugarcoat the problem. 

As I watched Mayor Bloomberg I couldn’t help but wonder why can’t our Presidential candidates talk to us this way? Maybe that’s not what we, the public, is demanding or maybe it’s something else. All I know is that at the end of the day one candidate will win and be faced with cleaning up this mess. My sincere hope is that the performance goes better than the auditons.