Financial panic and lukewarm presidential endorsements

My latest bloggingheads diavlog with Megan McArdle is up.  Topics include the financial panic, policy responses to said panic, Paul Krugman’s Nobel Prize, and who we’re voting for in November. So, yes, I’m voting for Obama.  I do this with little joy.  Obama’s trade policies are blinkered — I mean, seriously blinkered.  From his campaign ads, ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

My latest bloggingheads diavlog with Megan McArdle is up.  Topics include the financial panic, policy responses to said panic, Paul Krugman's Nobel Prize, and who we're voting for in November. So, yes, I'm voting for Obama.  I do this with little joy.  Obama's trade policies are blinkered -- I mean, seriously blinkered.  From his campaign ads, he seems to think that there are a fixed number of jobs in the world, so if China is creating new ones, we must be losing them.   I don't think bailing out the auto sector is a terribly good idea.  Oh, and he's not terribly open with the press, either.  So why Obama?  To quote Kerry Howley, "The only thing I know about Obama is that he is less scary than the other guy."  McCain's behavior in the past month has instilled zero confidence in me about his executive abilities.  Sarah Palin was an abjectly disastrous pick for VP, especially when John McCain is 72 and looks like he's 80.   McCain is the perfect Senator, because it allows him to focus on the issues he cares about.  That's not how the presidency works.  Based on his decisions and pronouncements to date, he'd be a disaster in the Oval Office. Finally, the fact is, my erstwhile party was in charge of the whole shebang for a few years and royally screwed up almost everything it touched.  If markets are supposed to let failures fail -- not the trendiest idea right now, I know -- then the Republicans have no right to be rewarded for their performance over the past eight years.  Let the GOP have its comeuppance and come back under new management. 

My latest bloggingheads diavlog with Megan McArdle is up.  Topics include the financial panic, policy responses to said panic, Paul Krugman’s Nobel Prize, and who we’re voting for in November. So, yes, I’m voting for Obama.  I do this with little joy.  Obama’s trade policies are blinkered — I mean, seriously blinkered.  From his campaign ads, he seems to think that there are a fixed number of jobs in the world, so if China is creating new ones, we must be losing them.   I don’t think bailing out the auto sector is a terribly good idea.  Oh, and he’s not terribly open with the press, either.  So why Obama?  To quote Kerry Howley, “The only thing I know about Obama is that he is less scary than the other guy.”  McCain’s behavior in the past month has instilled zero confidence in me about his executive abilities.  Sarah Palin was an abjectly disastrous pick for VP, especially when John McCain is 72 and looks like he’s 80.   McCain is the perfect Senator, because it allows him to focus on the issues he cares about.  That’s not how the presidency works.  Based on his decisions and pronouncements to date, he’d be a disaster in the Oval Office. Finally, the fact is, my erstwhile party was in charge of the whole shebang for a few years and royally screwed up almost everything it touched.  If markets are supposed to let failures fail — not the trendiest idea right now, I know — then the Republicans have no right to be rewarded for their performance over the past eight years.  Let the GOP have its comeuppance and come back under new management. 

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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