John McCain will fix your economy!
[McCain] has never departed in any major way from his party’s embrace of deregulation and relying more on market forces than on the government to exert discipline.
In early 1995, after Republicans had taken control of Congress, Mr. McCain promoted a moratorium on federal regulations of all kinds. He was quoted as saying that excessive regulations were “destroying the American family, the American dream” and voters “want these regulations stopped.” The moratorium measure was unsuccessful.
“I'm always for less regulation,” he told The Wall Street Journal last March, “but I am aware of the view that there is a need for government oversight” in situations like the subprime lending crisis, the problem that has cascaded through Wall Street this year. He concluded, “but I am fundamentally a deregulator.”
That comes from Jackie Calmes' piece looking at the two candidates' records on financial issues. McCain's record is deregulation. Obama hasn't worked on major finance issues before but has surrounded himself with people like Larry Summers, Paul Volcker and Bob Rubin, as well as Jared Bernstein, Austan Goolsebee and David Furman, who have experience and fall, more or less, into the tradition of responsible government intervention. Obama has a clear record of espousing center-left economic positions, so it's not unbelievable that he would seek to fix the mess that have led to the Wall Street crisis. But John McCain promising to do the same thing? Doesn't quite ring true.
--Tim Fernholz
