In a prescient piece on NPR two days before the election, Daniel Schor pointed out that it was during the Great Depression that Congress moved up Inauguration Day to its current date, January 20, from a date in March. He then argued that, with everything we have going on in the World these days, shortening the transition yet again so that the new president-elect, whoever that might be, could get started was an equally compelling idea.
There are wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that call for quick decisions that may not be honored coming from a lame-duck president. There is the likelihood that a Status of Forces Agreement covering American troops in Iraq may not have been reached by year-end when the current U.N. mandate expires. Unless that is renewed, American forces are left without a legal basis for operation.
There is Iran, enriching uranium and sowing the seeds of trouble throughout the Middle East, and reportedly willing to talk — but not to the outgoing president. There is the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, unlikely to yield the agreement that George Bush would like for his legacy. There is the financial crisis, requiring massive and swift action, and stimulus that a soon-to-be retired president will find it hard to deliver.
And, perhaps, most mystifying of all, there is the 20-nation summit conference that President Bush has convened in Washington for Nov. 15 to discuss coordinated actions to stave off further financial disasters. What long-range programs can be worked out with an outgoing president at odds with several foreign countries about how much regulation of the economy is needed? Or, should Mr. Bush have the president-elect in the room with him?
Mr. Schor, somewhat tongue-in-cheek (and perhaps anticipating last Tuesday's outcome) proposed November 10 for the transition. Notwithstanding the dizzying lists of appointments, arrangements, executive order reversals, plans, adjustments and logistics that have to be assembled, assigned, vetted, delegated, monitored and completed over the next 70 days, a list made only longer and tougher by the amount of changes that actually have to be made from our near-decade long national nightmare, it is difficult not to wonder if maybe Mr. Schor wasn't onto something.
As several Kossacks have already noted in exhaustive detail, even if the bailout did have the oversight, transparency and accountability that Pres-elect Obama, Rep. Frank, Sen Schumer and others proposed and insisted on (it apparently didn't), the bailout would have required extraordinarily difficult policy decisions about which banks, which brokerage firms, and even which industries should live and die. These decisions are now on the verge of being made by a lame duck president and his administration, with enormous long-term repercussions for the country with serious implications for everything from which retiree health and retirement plans we save to whether to tie the auto industry bailout decision to public-works reemployment programs to environmental/MPG issues.
The Treasury Department has declined to disclose who specifically the money has been spent on; Rep. Frank has threatened that banks that take the money but use it to do acquisitions instead of lending it out to businesses are violating the law (but there seems to be no one ready, willing or able to enforce these provisons of the law if that is really what the law says); banks have been incentivized to merge with huge obscure undisclosed multi-billion dollar tax incentives (without which, experts agree, the Wells-Wachovia deal would never even have happened; there is little additional lending going on; the AIG package has doubled to $175 billion (though most of it is apparently being used to collateralize existing AIG credit default); Fannie and Freddie Mac have now instituted a new program to restructure mortgages that the Treasury's man in charge of the TARP, Neel Kashkari, trumpeted today as a template for how all the troubled mortgages can work out, yet as the words were coming out of his mouth FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair apparently criticized the program as being seriously inadequate; no TARP "toxic assets" have yet been purchased, apparently because no one's been able to figure out appropriate auction procedures; other industries are beginning to line up at the door for their share; and before long Treasury is going to be knocking at Congress's door for the second slug of the money. All the while, the interaction between Obama and Bush devolves into a surreal cross-administrational poker game, where Bush sees Obama's aid for the auto industry (on what terms? how to save the jobs? fuel efficiency strings? equity in the automakers?) and raises him aid to Columbia.
Patience may be a virtue, but thought of letting these complicated, ill-thought-out entanglements and expenditures tying themselves in further and tighter knots over the next 2 1/2 months cannot help but raise this question: we've got eight years of mess to clean up; must we really watch all these weeks as they continue to make it considerably worse?
There was a time I confess, near the very end of the pre-election period when (within limits) I actually wanted things not to get that much better until our side was truly in charge, lest we forget how truly horrible things had become, and lose any of our fire for change. But that's our mess they're out there making now, and as confident as I am in our ability to clean it up, do we really have to stand here while they spill more food on the rug and set the drapes on fire?
I've got no solution, just this humble wish: it sure would be nice if there was a way to get this guy to resign early? Is it just me, or did he have a "can't wait to be out of here" look on his face during his little get together with the Obamas yesterday? It's not as if Obama isn't going to be the next president. He can't really want his approval rating to go into the teens, can he?
Any thoughts?