So the usual suspects have all been pontificating on why the Bailout Bill failed to pass. (As you can see, even I weighed in on the subject in my own cynical way - see post below.) Depending on which biased news source you favor, one of two things happened:
A) Nancy Pelosi is an idiot who couldn't resist the opportunity to blame this whole mess on Bush/Republicans immediately before asking the very same Republicans to vote with her. (Fox News - paraphrased)
B) Nancy Pelosi is a very smart woman who delivered the votes she promised, but the Republicans didn't do their part. (NY Times/CNN - paraphrased)
Looking a little closer at the numbers tells me that it's a little from Column A and a little from Column B. The Dems voted 140 - 95 for the bill. So why are the NY Times, et al saying that Pelosi "delivered the Dems" votes? Aren't the Dems are a majority in Congress? I'll let Reason's Hit & Run blog explain:
Now, we "know" why the Republicans pissed on the bill (well, by a 2-to-1 margin, meaning 65 GOPpers voted for the bailout): Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) gave a rankly partisan speech that dried House Minority Leader John Boehner's teary eyes and steeled the will of the free-market ideologues to vote against a bill they know is bad for all sorts of reasons (more on that in a second).
But why didn't the Dems, who hold a freaking majority in the House, not pass the bill on a party-line vote? Did you get that above about the Dems? Pelosi delivered the votes, but just not enough of them. WTF? That's like a line from Pravda.
Actually, according to the morning yak shows, she gave passes to tons of congressfolks in "tough" re-election fights, and to various other folks who didn't like the bill.
This comment from the same blog-post gives exactly my reaction to this:
Let me get this straight. It is financial armagedon, the end of the world, 1933 all over again, yet you give your members in close districts passes to vote against the bill. Either Pelosi is lying when she says things are that bad, which since she lies about nearly everything is certainly possible, or she is more interested in power than the well being of the country.
I am starting to think maybe this whole thing is overblown. The problem is that it is impossible to tell the truth. The media is basically the ministry of truth for the Democratic Party and interesting in nothing beyond getting Obama elected, so they will never tell anything not calculated to achieve that end. You would like to think that Pelosi would do the right thing. But, Pelosi is probably one of the three of four dumbest people ever to hold office in this country. She is wrong about nearly everything. Is she wrong about the scope of the problem? Does she just not care? Her mind is so simple, yet so craven, I am not really sure how to read it.
Lest you get the idea that I believe it's a BAD thing that the bailout bill failed, let me just share some more of Reason's wisdom on why passing it would have been a terrible outcome:
In any case, here are two non-ideological reasons why it's great that this bailout went down the tubes faster than you can say "Bearstearnswachoviaaig":
1. This thing was The PATRIOT Act of the financial world. That is, it's a bill designed to address an enormously complicated situation that will have incredibly far-reaching implications probably for decades. Warren Buffet and others have invoked Pearl Harbor to conjure up the need for speed when it comes to the bailout. But this isn't war. Or terrorism. Or even a depression. We've got time to work through the details, which are all that matter. There isn't any need to pass virtually any bill in seven days, or even seven weeks, or even seven months. Especially important ones. That's one (of many) lessons of The PATRIOT Act experience.
2. This thing is gigantically unpopular with the American people. Polls show large majorities against the bailout, which suggests that, at the very least, the Hank Paulsons, George Bushes, Barney Franks, and Nancy Pelosis of the world have done a real crap job of selling the bill to people. At least since federal soldiers illegally kicked the Cherokees out of the Southeast, the government has had a credibility gap wider bigger than Lyndon Johnson's earlobes. That trend has, er, only accelerated under President Bush for reasons that don't need to be rehearsed here. And Pelosi, remember, came into office saying the Dems were going to be the party of fiscal responsibility—and then larded up a farm bill with more lard than a Golden Corral parking lot. This bailout came with a "Trust Us" sticker on it. And no one is willing to trust the government (a good thing, actually).
Oh and one last thing - a whole bunch of Reps voted "No" simply because that's what their constituents wanted. The American people "spoke" and said they did not want this. So why are so many talking heads from tv, newspapers, and bloggers, calling those Reps "cowards" for voting the way their constituents wanted them to? Isn't that what they are supposed to do? Represent US - the people that elected them? Isn't that why they are called REPRESENTATIVES? If I wanted someone to go to Washington and do my thinking for me, I would call them Mommies and Daddies, not Representatives. So bite me Matt Lauer and all your blow-dried friends.
