Eric Rauchway brings up a historical parallel I wasn't aware of:
Ouch. It's important to note that an aversion to regulation is one of the rare things that's actually older than John McCain. For all his posturing as a sui generis politician, he, like most everyone involved in politics, cannot know about all subjects from all angles and so has fitted himself into an intellectual tradition whose values he likes and whose solutions he broadly agrees with. That tradition is economic conservatism. At times, that may be the right tradition for a president facing the particular array of ills facing the country. It's extremely hard to argue, however, that it's the right tradition for this moment in the economy, when even George W. Bush's Federal Reserve Chairman and Treasury Secretary are having to engineer interventions of unprecedented scale. McCain may have been an excellent candidate for 2000, and you could even argue he had some real advantages in 2004. But a massive financial crisis brought on by exactly the sort of deregulation he's spent his career advocating is not the sort of moment that he's proven himself suited to managing. This is a guy who has said, proudly, "I'm always for less regulation" and who elevated Phil Gramm -- arguably the politician most responsible for the current crisis -- to a top economic job. This is a guy who, three years ago, wanted to turn Social Security over to Wall Street. It may indeed be that McCain realizes his traditional opinions are unsuited to this moment and will gesture towards some new opinions, but two weeks of rethinking is no substitute for years of engagement with a more appropriate theory of governance. Though the McCain campaign would like to argue otherwise, the presidency is not solely about one person, his character or his honor. President is a big job, and the officeholder tends to fall back on their tradition, intellectual networks, and preexisting policy biases. Changing all that midstream is not easy.
Responding to the collapse of several major investment banks this week, John McCain reassured us, "I think still -- the fundamentals of our economy are strong." That move comes from an old playbook: On Oct. 25, 1929, Herbert Hoover declared, "The fundamental business of the country, that is the production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis."
Ouch. It's important to note that an aversion to regulation is one of the rare things that's actually older than John McCain. For all his posturing as a sui generis politician, he, like most everyone involved in politics, cannot know about all subjects from all angles and so has fitted himself into an intellectual tradition whose values he likes and whose solutions he broadly agrees with. That tradition is economic conservatism. At times, that may be the right tradition for a president facing the particular array of ills facing the country. It's extremely hard to argue, however, that it's the right tradition for this moment in the economy, when even George W. Bush's Federal Reserve Chairman and Treasury Secretary are having to engineer interventions of unprecedented scale. McCain may have been an excellent candidate for 2000, and you could even argue he had some real advantages in 2004. But a massive financial crisis brought on by exactly the sort of deregulation he's spent his career advocating is not the sort of moment that he's proven himself suited to managing. This is a guy who has said, proudly, "I'm always for less regulation" and who elevated Phil Gramm -- arguably the politician most responsible for the current crisis -- to a top economic job. This is a guy who, three years ago, wanted to turn Social Security over to Wall Street. It may indeed be that McCain realizes his traditional opinions are unsuited to this moment and will gesture towards some new opinions, but two weeks of rethinking is no substitute for years of engagement with a more appropriate theory of governance. Though the McCain campaign would like to argue otherwise, the presidency is not solely about one person, his character or his honor. President is a big job, and the officeholder tends to fall back on their tradition, intellectual networks, and preexisting policy biases. Changing all that midstream is not easy. 
