John McCain has cut two ads tying Obama to former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson, who worked for the Obama campaign for about two days before he was fired in an uproar, and another former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, who actually told the McCain campaign days ago that he wasn’t advising Obama. Today, he basically tried to blame the financial crisis on Obama:
We’ve heard a lot of words from Senator Obama over the course of this campaign. But maybe just this once he could spare us the lectures, and admit to his own poor judgment in contributing to these problems. The crisis on Wall Street started in the Washington culture of lobbying and influence peddling, and he was square in the middle of it.
McCain, by contrast, is still square in the middle of it. Of the 177 lobbyists listed by Mother Jones as working for the McCain campaign as advisers, aides, or fundraisers, thirteen lobbied on behalf of Freddie Mac, twelve for Fannie Mae, and seven for AIG, which was recently bailed out by the government. There’s some overlap among them, several lobbied for two or all three of the above. Wayne Berman, a top fundraiser for the McCain campaign, is still registered as a lobbyist for AIG, according to Bloomberg. Berman is a triple threat, having lobbied for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well. McCain says lobbyists “don’t come to my office” but they practically live there.
It’s worth looking at how much money each candidate has taken from the Finance, Insurance & Real Estate industries. Obama has raised almost 25 million, and McCain has raised about 22 million (a substantially larger percentage of his haul). So clearly, neither candidates was squeamish about taking the finance industries’ bucks.
These institutions only wield influence in as much as they’re able to sway a candidate towards their goals. What matters is the quid pro quo of money for favors. So at this point one has to look at the candidate’s rhetoric, their ideology, and the ideological disposition of those around them. Both McCain and Obama have said a lot about regulation in the past few days, but neither has put out a clear plan. McCain’s ideology predisposes him towards the kind of measures that got us here, and having Phil Gramm and a mess of financial industry lobbyists at his side doesn’t help. Obama has taken a lot of money from the financial industry, but his advisers are made up of some pretty sound folks, including Paul Volcker, the FED chairmen who helped bring America out of a recession during the Reagan Administration.
All things considered, I think Obama has more credibility here, and it looks like for now, most voters agree. But the weakest charge McCain has leveled at Obama is the idea that he’s at “the center of lobbyists and influence peddling,” McCain’s campaign is a veritable hive buzzing with the kind of influence peddlers he’s slamming every day on the campaign trail.
