No-bama, ad nauseum

Another point to consider when casting ballots in 42 days, brought to us by Hot Air.

Despite moves from Republicans such as Chuck Hagel, John Sununu, Elizabeth Dole, and John McCain to get more regulatory oversight on Fannie and Freddie, Congress took no action [in 2005].  Why?  Fannie and Freddie had already co-opted Chris Dodd with over $130,000 in campaign contributions over 20 years, and over $120,000 to Barack Obama over less than four years.  Hillary Clinton  took tens of thousands in eight years, and Chuck Schumer also opposed any new regulation on markets that Congress had forced open.

We can play blame games for the next several months and years, but what would be the point?  In this case, there is a point, and it couldn’t be more clear or important.  We have two candidates running for President who would bring much different styles to executive authority over regulatory responsibility.  Barack Obama and his allies took the money and stayed on the sidelines rather than take proactive action to resolve the credit crisis.  McCain and his co-sponsors of this bill had the right idea and instincts, but could not get any cooperation from Clinton, Schumer, or Obama.

Does this mean that Obama gets the entire blame for the financial crisis?  Of course not; it’s shared among many people who failed to act, and some who acted poorly to create the problem in the first place by mandating loans to ill-qualified lenders and then allowed those loans to form the basis of widely-traded securities.  McCain doesn’t become the sole protagonist in this morality play, either.  However, this demonstrates the qualities of both judgment and leadership of both men — and those two qualities are critical for determining which man should be running the executive branch for the next four years.