interesting stuff from the straight talk express. Thanks for sharing it.
Observations:
looking at the video as a whole, McCain was being honest about what he knew and didn't know on the subject. I appreciate that honesty.
I'd rather have that, than someone pretending to know a whole lot when they don't. Thats when you get into trouble as a leader. plus, in McCain's defense, the video was from 10 months ago, so knowledge and understanding of the sub-prime mess wasn't as prevalent.
that said Obama's camp could tear apart that video and take some clips that make McCain look quite bad.
As an average person in business world who keeps up with events, I probably was as knowledgeable back then on the subject as McCain. Thats not saying much. You can't expect your president to be expert on everything, but hope they have a basic feel for the big issues. McCain definitely didn't seem comfortable with the topic.
McCain said there was no way of knowing this crisis was coming and that it was a surprise to most everybody. True, nobody could gauge the scope of this mess, but most everybody thought we had a problem with a real estate bubble. Wall St. Journal had been running articles about how many houses were being bought with no money down, using variable interest rates. There were lots of tremors.
McCain also expressed confidence in the experts at the fed, the SEC, and the treasury dept to handle the situation, because he honestly didn't have an idea himself. from what I hear the SEC guy is an incompetent bush crony - kind of like Brown was at Fema. McCain didn't look knowledgeable enough to sit in the room with the experts he would lead.
when mentioning some other economic busts of recent history, someone mentioned the S&L bailouts of the 80s. I'd forgotten about them, but remembered McCain got tarnished in scandal back then somehow. Anyway- when someone said Saving and Loans, McCain really flinched, got nervous and said What?
people in the room looked very bored and zoned out during his response.
Overall, on a scale of 1 to 10 I'd rate McCain's handling of that sub-prime question a 4 (he got a few points for honesty.)