Plumbing the week

This was the week of the last debate, when John McCain asserted that “the very fabric of democracy” was put in danger by ACORN’s less than perfect efforts to register new voters and hoisted “Joe the Plumber” to national fame.

On Monday, Barack Obama started the week with a 10 point advantage in the polls. “Right where we want him“, said John McCain. Oh, really?

On Tuesday, John McCain retooled his economic message, and introduced the country to Joe the Plumber and attacked Barack Obama for talking of “spreading the wealth”. The republican candidate also gave new emphasis to his guilt-by-associations attacks on Barack Obama, and insisted that a massive electoral fraud was about to be perpetrated by ACORN.

On Wednesday, John McCain had his best debate performance ever, but that was still not enough to close the gap. Reluctant to give the victory to Barack Obama as the polls had, he declared: “Joe the Plumber is the winner”.

The next day, of course, we learned that Joe the Plumber was neither a Joe nor a plumber, and that he was a republican voter. We also learned that his last name was misspelled on his electoral registration – which added a dose of irony to the Ohio republican party’s legal proceedings regarding the 200 000 names of local voters that did not seem to match the public database.

On Friday, the Supreme Court sided with the Ohio secretary of State in charge of elections, a democrat. The federal appeals court was not competent in the matter; its order was void. However, that same day, the information was leaked that the FBI had followed up on the request by several republican member of Congress to open an investigation on ACORN.

On Saturday, a lawyer for the Obama campaign also wrote Attorney General Mukasey – this time to ask that these maneuvers by the RNC be examined, and added to the task of the independent prosecutor currently looking into possible indictments after the firing of US prosecutors by the Bush administration.

On Sunday, Colin Powell made the most complete case for his choice to vote for Barack Obama… and a total indictment of John McCain: “unsure” on the economical crisis, with questionable judgment as he selected Sarah Palin “incompetent to be President” as his running mate. The centrist republican hits every note that might resonate with independent undecided voters: his anxiety regarding appointments to the Supreme Court, the tone and the divisiveness of the republican campaign. He denounced in particular the vitriolic “robocalls” that the McCain/Palin campaign had launched in swing States.

—————————————————————–

READ THIS WEEK (a little extra from the French viewpoints):

President Sarkozy’s visit to Camp David (with the president of the European commission) gets more play in the French press, obviously, than it does in the US. The financial summit to be organized in November, after the American presidential election, will be the ultimate lame-duck experience for President Bush, a fact not entirely lost on the vocal Europeans.

The internal investigation of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s conduct at the IMF (revealed by the always zealous Wall Street Journal, when it comes to such matters) also gets a different play – if only because the notion of private and public life are markedly different in each country… or should I write “were different”, considering the increased “pipolisation” – as in “people-ization” of French politics by Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy? In this case, DSK’s wife is famous in her own right. She’s a well-known journalist; she writes a blog on which she thanked those who sent her sympathetic messages and assured them that, as far as she and her husband is concerned, this brief incident is already in the past. She hopes for swift conclusions from the investigation, a desire that can only be shared by the many that think that, in the midst of the most consequential economical crisis in recent history, the IMF has more pressing issues to consider.

My new favorite word: “femafication”

Why the lack of American leadership in the current financial crisis?  Could it be that the “Femafication of government under President Bush” has something to do with it, wonders Paul Krugman in today’s column praising Gordon Brown’s action.

There is no Nobel prize for neologisms, as far as I know, but there ought to be one… and Paul Krugman could definitely be a candidate. Heck-of-a-word!

The worst week

So this was the worst week for Wall Street. It was also the worst week on the campaign trail.

As the Dow plunged on Monday, John McCain and Sarah Palin unveiled what would become the theme of their week: a series of attacks wrapped in one overarching question, “Who is Barack Obama?”

Barack Obama is the man who kept moving up in the polls, in spite of attack ads, of McCain supporters calling him “Barack Hussein Obama”, and of an effort to link him to a “terrorist”.

The debate, Wednesday night, was devoid of any trace of that theme. Six million questions had been submitted. Yet, that second debate mostly reprised the first encounter, albeit in front of a bigger audience.  John McCain haphazardly announced a new plan to buy off 300 billion dollars worth of bad mortgage but, essentially, no news was made. Barack Obama “won” the night merely by appearing steady and articulate.

The next day, John McCain gave more details about his mortgage plan; he was greeted with criticism from the left (Obama’s claim that it would mostly help the financial firms responsible for the mess) and the right (another massive bailout that would push the country towards “socialist” policies).

The campaign took off again on two separate tracks: McCain/Palin questioning “who is Barack Obama” and insisting that he is “too risky”; Obama/Biden questioning McCain’s “erratic” performance and his ability to reverse the economy’s down trend.

At the end of the week, it became apparent that McCain’s effort to link Barack Obama to Bill Ayers was not producing any noticeable results in the polls. It was producing plenty of anger, though, and John McCain could not ignore it any longer when it spilled into questions posed directly in his “town hall” meetings. He tried to tone down his supporter’s rage, with variable degrees of success.

Friday, as the week was about to close with some of the worst economic data ever, George Bush addressed the nation. No news, no point, no effect. The other news, on Friday, was the evening release of the report on the “troopergate” affair. Sarah Palin, according to the bipartisan investigation’s conclusions, abused her power and violated Alaska ethics laws. It seems that in this instance she ran the government as a family business (Todd Palin helping) to solve a family issue (the on-going feud with the governor’s sister ex husband).

————————————————————

READ THIS WEEK (a little extra from the French viewpoints)

In other news, this was the week the Nobel for literature was attributed – not to an American, everyone had been right in predicting that, but to a French writer who is also a resident of New Mexico. An article in “Le Monde” explores how JMG Le Clézion is “misunderstood” in the United States, creating discomfort for the way he’s perceived both as a nomad and an “exotic-ist”. here. I was lamenting, in passing, the lack of translations of contemporary novels on the American market; once again, “Le Monde” gives the sad details – 3% only of all novels published in the United States are foreign literature. Complete article here.

And since there was so much news about “domestic terrorist” this week, I can not resist this little piece in “Libération”, about the visit Carla Bruni-Sarkozy paid to Marina Petrella. Once a member of the Brigade Rosse, a radical violent group in the seventies, Marina Petrella had lived peacefully in France, granted the asylum president Mitterrand offered all those who would lay down their arms. Italy’s current government wanted Marina Petrella extradited so that she could serve a life sentence for murder. She went on a hunger strike. The First Lady of France was bearing a message from her husband: the extradition request has been denied. The story: here.

In other “domestic terrorist news”, Jean-Marc Rouillan (of “Action Directe”, a French revolutionary armed movement) was sent back to jail after he failed to publicly “regret” the 1986 assassination of George Besse, the former CEO of Renault, when talking to the French weekly “L’Express”. The facts, here. That gives Mathieu Lindon an opportunity for a nice little riff on the general hypocrisy of the “regrets” protocole. Full text here.

The PSA president

President Bush spoke, once again, about the financial crisis.

The good news: he made no news. Or is that really good news?

He’s now the PSA president – the voice that one hears on the subway, when a train is stuck between stations. It informs passengers that they’re stuck between stations (they knew), that the problem has been identified (it has) and that every effort is underway to fix the problem (the least one could ask for, considering the price we’re paying for the service). But that does not move the train now, does it?