Do The Democrats Deserve A Media Pass On The Economy?

From: The Desk of Emmett Tyrrell

How is it that Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has been damaged badly by this financial crisis while the Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, is presenting himself successfully as a financial genius capable of working Christ’s miracle of the loaves and fishes on our economy?

The financial markets froze up because the Democrats prevailed on mortgage lenders — mainly Freddie Mac and Fannie Mac — to relax standards against thitherto unqualified property buyers. They did it out of an ideological commitment to their thesis that poor people living in private homes would be better citizens. It was a noble vision. Yet it was economically untenable. A huge real estate bubble resulted, and now that the bubble has burst, the entire economy is imperiled.

Curiously, the Democrats have not suffered the consequences of their “deregulation” of the mortgage market. Instead, they have hung the “deregulation” canard on McCain. As the record makes clear, it is McCain who signed on to a letter with 19 other Republican senators in 2006 calling for the tightening up of Fannie’s and Freddie’s loans. Even before that, in the summer of 2005, Republican Sen. Richard Shelby fashioned a bill in the Senate Banking Committee to impose stricter regulations on Fannie and Freddie, only to see it blocked from getting to the Senate floor by a party-line vote, which kept it in committee. The Republicans favored this regulation tightening. The Democrats opposed it.

In an early example of his slipperiness, Sen. Obama stood with his fellow Democrats in opposing the bill. Then he went on record opposing his own vote by writing the secretary of the Treasury that subprime mortgages are dangerous. As has been said of other evasive politicians, Obama is a chameleon on plaid. Apparently, a chameleon on plaid can escape having the media hold him accountable even as he boldly opposes stricter regulations on subprime loans while writing the Treasury to oppose such loans. Yet how is it that the media have given the entire Democratic Party a pass on its advocacy of subprime loans?