Yesterday the NY Times had a headlinethat said all you need to know about America's belief in the White House: "Wall St. in Worst Loss Since ’01 Despite Reassurances by Bush." Right now the top story on the Times site has a similar subhead about today's events on Wall Street: "Dow Drops 4% Despite Assurances From Government." Note that Bush is missing from the latter headline.
And tonight the key element of Hardball wasn't how Chris Matthews took Eric Cantor to the woodshed about Republicans trying to change their uniforms. It was his passionate diatribe on the theme: "Where's the president?" Transcript below.
I don't know which is worse: that the nation isn't getting the leadership it wants, or that it has no faith in what leadership it does get.
Matthews, frustrated by Cantor already, said:
"We're in a national crisis right now. I'm looking at the market everyday, and it's scary, and we have a President of the United States who's still in office. He still lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The normal president at this time of a crisis would be on national television at nine o'clock at night talking to the American people about the problems we face."
After asking Cantor whether he and the Republicans support Bush and the way he's leading the country economically, a question Cantor blew off, Matthews stepped things up--and you know Matthews is really pissed because he's started to call Cantor "sir" the way a cop does when he's trying to deal with someone getting in his grill:
"I know Harry Truman is one of your heroes, sir, 'cause he's a hero of every Republican. And he said, 'The buck stops here.' I'm just asking, Where's the President of [the] United States tonight? You have Paulson out there. Where's the president? He's pulling one of these Katrinas again. Where is he? The country's worried like hell when you lose this amount of value in the wealth of this country in a matter of days. You'd think the president would come on television and explain the situation to the American people. I'm just asking where he is."
Cantor did not know.
Here's the thing: Bush did address at least reporters. As the NY Times reported:
Appearing briefly in the morning before reporters in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush characterized the recent events as short-term market adjustments that would have a limited effect on an otherwise sound economy.
"I know Americans are concerned about the adjustments that are taking place in our financial markets," Mr. Bush said at a ceremony to welcome the president of Ghana.
One can only imagine what the president of Ghana must have thought.
Matthews is right. Wall Street is the new New Orleans, not Galveston. This time, though, the ship of state has not just been cast adrift by the captain. He's stove in the hull, and now he's rowing away in a lifeboat as quickly and as quietly as possible.