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.

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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).

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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?

An answer to that “what don’t you know?” question

Remember that question with “a certain zen-like quality” that Tom Brokaw choose to close the presidential debate: “What don’t you know, and how will you learn it?”

Here’s my contribution, by way of an excellent piece, good to the last gulp, by Steve Coll: – here.

There is much we don’t know, it appears, about the “shadow banking system” and the size of “a global private market whose products, combined, have a nominal value roughly equal to the size of the world economy’s output in a year”.

At the rate things are going, it’s going to be some Halloween…

The bailout week

This was bailout week, with only a bit of light entertainment: the vice-presidential debate, Thursday night.

On Monday, the bailout was re-branded the “buy-in”. It had inflated from 3 to 110 pages. Nobody seemed to like the plan, yet the leadership of the House (as well as both presidential candidates and the Bush administration) thought it would pass. John McCain was so hopeful that he took credit for it Monday morning.

Then it all crashed. The plan was voted down. The blame game started quickly, with republicans pointing to the House Speaker’s partisan speech. Barney Frank, chairman of the Finance Committee, fired back: republicans were refusing to rescue the nation’s economy “because their feelings were hurt?” At the end of the day, the markets had sunk with historical velocity. 12 missing votes translated to 777 points vanishing from the Dow. Barack Obama pleaded for calm; John McCain blamed the day’s fiasco on Barack Obama… for blaming him.

Tuesday, George Bush appealed to the nation: the situation is grave. Talks would be on-going between his administration and Congress.

Wednesday, both presidential candidates toned down their rhetoric. It also became quickly apparent that Barack Obama was benefiting from the crisis. The economy has become the paramount worry amongst Americans, and, on that issue, they trust him more than they do John McCain. The first elements of a new version of the plan started to emerge. A vote was scheduled Thursday evening. Both candidates told their supporters why they would support this bitter pill of a bill, and talked about restoring the national economy – acting “for you”, in McCain’s case; “with you”, in Obama’s case. Briefly back in Washington, both senators (and Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden) approved the plan that passed the Senate 75 votes to 24. By now, it was a 450 page document, loaded with an extra 150 billions dose of sweeteners.

Thursday, as the House came back to work, the attention shifted to the vice-presidential debate. The usual expectations game was played; some conservative attacked the referee, the debate’s host Gwenn Ifill. They just discovered she was writing a book about the new African-American leaders “in the age of Obama”. The debate turned into an exercise in parallel reality in which a somewhat restrained Joe Biden answered the moderator’s questions while a petulant Sarah Palin decided to cheerfully ignore them. In the end, the public liked Sarah Palin’s TV-friendly performance but trusted Joe Biden much more to be “a heartbeat away from the presidency”.

Friday, the House passed the economic rescue plan, and George Bush signed it immediately. The markets were not as exuberant as one might have thought. Another number casts a dark pall on the national economy: 159 000 jobs lost in September, bringing the total after 9 months of consistently bad news to 750 000 jobs lost since the beginning of the year. The approval trend for John McCain kept edging lower as Americans worried about their future.

By the weekend, with polls indicating a steady improvement for Barack Obama, the McCain team had already given up in the battleground state of Michigan. That retreat was not to be confused with a lack of fighting spirit; the republican candidate had declared he would “take off the gloves” (not that anyone noticed that he was being particularly delicate). Sarah Palin made good on his promise. She accused Barack Obama of “palling with terrorists”, a clear distortion of the examination of the future senator’s real but tenuous relation with William Ayers, a Weatherman in the sixties, now a University of Illinois professor.

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

1. Obama’s planned negociations with Russia? Vincent Jauvert, on his blog, speculates on the possibility of the US and Russia concluding an arms reduction and arms control agreement in 2009. He quotes a Russian affairs adviser to the Obama campaign, on his way to Moscow.

2. What’s the impact of the financial crisis on Hollywood? Françoise Benhamou weighs the dangers of the current financial crisis for the American movie industry (finding financing on their domestic market was already challenging; it will be worse) and the potential effect of the $ 470 million dollars sweetener inserted in the final version of the Paulson plan (it will support “small” productions and help preserve local employment).

A week of suspended disbelief

A quick recap of last week…

By Monday, after a full-alarm weekend, Americans – and the rest of the world – were trying to grasp the idea that the financial crisis would require a 700 billion dollars bailout. There are price tags that freeze the brain, and it does not help that this problem involves complicated instruments that numb the mind – even that of the Wall-Streeters and regulators that were supposed to deal with them.

Tuesday, after many short acts previews, New York was the venue for the international launch of a new contemporary silent movie, “Sarah goes to the UN”.

Wednesday, John McCain decided to stop the music. With polls plunging, revelations ramped up about the lobbyists who run his campaign, and the impending disaster of Sarah Palin’s CBS interview, he suddenly sensed the financial crisis was a major disaster; it required "putting politics" aside. He announced he was "suspending" his campaign, and called on Barack Obama to do the same. In the evening, the president delivered one his fixed-gaze address that signals major doom.

Thursday, the McCain campaign did not seem quite “suspended” when news came of a bipartisan agreement on the principles of the bailout in Washington, on the basis of the Paulin plan. Worrisome: Senate republicans were in the picture, but House republicans were nowhere to be seen. McCain to the rescue? The senator rushed to the Hill, and visited with them. The immediate effect seemed only to embolden the conservatives, thus ensuring the fiasco of an afternoon meeting at the White House that had been initially designed to end with a happy photo op.

Friday, the fake suspense of the “suspension” was lifted. John McCain backed down from his threat of not appearing at the debate. He had given an chance to the forgotten presidential candidates to remind Americans of their existence, when some of them suggested they could fill in for the republican. Somehow, this year, the exclusion of the smaller parties has not provoked any major… debate. Yet it was a good opportunity to explain to a foreign audience (that is used to public airwaves actually being public, with access to all) the “privatization” of the electoral debate in the US.

The debate itself seem to generate nearly as much interest overseas than in the US, as well as the perceived “win” by Barack Obama. It remains the main news this weekend… up to the breaking news of the late afternoon, that an "new and improved" bailout plan has been outlined, and put on line for all to read.

And because Sarah Palin can’t be responsible alone to entertain the world, Sarah Silverman also does her best.

Nearly lost in all this? Texans, asking for a “mere” 16 billion dollars to start recovering from hurricane Ike.