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First Read: The day in politics by NBC News for NBC News
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FIRST THOUGHTS.
*** Who Shouldn't Be Blamed: Just when you thought there couldn't be any more
twists and turns in this election year, the House yesterday rejected the Bush
Administration's $700 billion bailout package and the Dow plummeted. It's hard
to find any blameless characters in this congressional bailout mess. But is it
possible what Congress did yesterday was exactly what the voters wanted? The
voters don't trust this current team in Washington -- or on Wall Street -- to
do, well, anything. Here are some startling numbers from our last NBC/WSJ poll:
73% said we're on the wrong track; 65% disapprove of Bush's job; 73% disapprove
of the job Congress is doing; and only 19% have "a lot" of confidence in the
federal government, and that's higher than the confidence level the public has
in corporate America (11%) or the financial industry (10%). So given all these
polling figures, is it any wonder the public logged so many calls into Congress
demanding their members vote against this bill? By the way, while many
(including us) are talking about a crisis in leadership in Washington, it is
worth noting that a powerful bipartisan coalition against the bailout has come
from both the left and the right.
*** "Lord Of The Flies" Inside The GOP: So who runs the Republican Party?
Apparently nobody. Perhaps the most startling political development was the
amazing lack of leadership on the GOP side of the aisle. Let's run down the
list of Republican leaders who attempted to persuade skeptical House
Republicans: President Bush, John McCain, Dick Cheney, and John Boehner. (We'd
add Newt Gingrich to this list, but no one is quite sure if his last-minute
support was actually cover for his behind the scenes whipping against the
bill.) Bush's leadership and trust issues within his party has been evidenced
for quite some time, and the icing on the Bush legacy cake is that fact that he
could only convince FOUR Texas House Republicans to support his bill. And then
there's John McCain, who last week decided to insert himself into the process
and then (before the bailout failed) took credit for getting wavering House
Republicans on board. Perhaps he did get a few wayward House GOPers on board --
but it wasn't enough. Now McCain gets a double stomach punch: He's stuck being
seen as supportive of this bailout (which isn't exactly popular with the
conservative grassroots) and he gets to share in the blame for the defeat since
he didn't have enough political capital to get this done (By the way, not a
single member of the Arizona GOP delegation voted for this bill). Watching the
McCain campaign deal with this yesterday, one could sense that they were
fearful that they were going to look inept and take an even deeper political
wound than they sustained last week.
*** Democrats Can't Escape Blame: Pelosi missed a huge opportunity to become an
historic speaker and instead invited comparisons to Tom DeLay by deciding to
deliver a more partisan speech than necessary at the time. There would have
been time for partisan politics AFTER the vote, but to do it before seemed like
a strategic blunder. Pelosi played into the stereotype she had been very adept
at avoiding most of these last two years. That said, did it really cost any GOP
votes? Unlikely. But it did give the House GOP leadership a talking point to
deflect from its own failure. Obama, who as McCain pointed out (probably
jealously) kept a healthy distance from this process, didn't seem to try and
exert any influence on some of the "no" votes from the progressive/liberal side
of the Democratic caucus. A large chunk of those "no" voters were very early
supporters of Obama during the primary. Would a true campaign by Obama to vote
for this bill have persuaded another handful of Dems? Possibly. Then again,
Democrats were never going to jump off this cliff by themselves. Still, what's
another 12 votes at this point if this legislation is so necessary?
First Read with NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd, every weekday on
MSNBC-TV at 9 a.m. ET.
For more: The latest edition of First Read is available now at
http://www.FirstRead.MSNBC.com !
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