The race between Josh Segall and Mike Rodgers is one of those excellent examples of where we in the netroots can make a huge difference in replacing an ineffective, out-of-touch Republican with a smart, principled progressive. One of those "more and better" Democrats we like to talk about so much. I'll give you an example of the kind of thing that impresses me so much about Josh Segall. It's all about how he's approaching what is probably the single most critical issue that faces our country, and our globe, right now: our collective response to the financial crisis via the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).
The TARP, i.e. the thing you probably know as the "bailout" if you unabashedly hate it or the "rescue package" if you merely loathe it, is the kind of mess you get when governing by the seat of your pants. But given the perilous nature of the financial problems we were facing, even reliable voices from Paul Krugman to Alan Blinder were arguing that the federal government had to step in and arrest the momentum of cascading financial institution failures.
Now, in an episode I guess we can chalk up to the "let W be W" philosophy of this administration, the Secretary of the Treasury responded to the crisis with a deeply unserious, 3 page document outlining a bailout package wherein Henry Paulson is basically declared emperor of the American economy. Ok that's a bit hyperbolic, and maybe Paulson really did just want to take his old Wall Street adversaries to the woodshed (as Kevin Drum claimed) and needed a free hand to do so, but as George W. Bush famously said, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice....I won't get fooled again."
We've all heard that story by now - what in the world does this have to do with a House race in Alabama? Well in the face of such tumult, it would have been easy for our candidate down in AL-03 to punt on the seriousness of the crisis in two ways. He could have demagogued on the issue, mindlessly taking pot-shots from outside the halls of government without regard for any possible merits of the plan. Alternatively he could have been swallowed by the moment and could have decided to go along to get along so as to appear one of the Very Serious People (who, of course, got us in the mess in the first place).
Josh took Door #3. He not only opposed TARP, he opposed it in a way that actually exposed a better road for us to go down. He outlined, step-by-step, every significant problem with TARP. At the very minimum (and it's a testament to the utter disrepair the art of governance is in that this even needs to be said), Segall says, Treasury's fundamental approach to the problem was deeply flawed:
This entire bailout process has been all about making the rules up as we go along. It's a $700 billion blank check to the Treasury Department that allows Secretary Paulson to give money to any institution in the country that's in financial trouble, even credit card companies if they've given credit cards to people who can't afford to pay them off. That is particularly frightening given that the Treasury's handling of the bailout so far has been a total, ad hoc train wreck. Our markets have always been the envy of the world because investors can tell the value of assets and because we don't change the rules as we go along. But now no one knows what the rules are, and it's caused an overwhelming crisis of confidence
But the trouble didn't just stop with the approach, it continued with the execution. Josh Segall lent his voice to those who wisely pointed out that rather than dithering for weeks (or months, as he points out; let's not forget, after all, that Treasury never once admitted to a problem after the rescue of Bear Stearns until basically right before the collapse of Lehman Brothers) on plans to just buy up impossible-to-reliably-evaluate mortgage-backed securities, we should have been focused on injecting equity into troubled banks to unfreeze credit markets.
And finally, the issue that has so far been left out since people like Segall's opponent Congressman Mike Rodgers are still running the show: what are we going to about the tidal wave that is working its way through the broader economy. Via the campaign staff, we hear that Segall is championing the notion of investing in our economy through infrastructure development and a stimulus package. This is the kind of voice we need in Congress.
Hey and you know what? I'm going to leave you with a wonderful teaser. It turns out smart policy is smart politics. What was once a 40 point deficit has been closed to 3. I'm going to dig around to find a link to that but guys this is eminently doable. We're on the verge of seeing one of the most dramatic comeback stories in all of Congress: it's time to help our friends in AL-03 close the deal.
Leave everything on the road.