This one is a big one. Apparently, while McCain was pretending that the subprime crisis didn't exist, he had a lobbyist and Vice-Chair of a bank facing major subprime exposure "whispering in his ear." Who is the lobbyist? Former Senator Phil Gramm -- the epitome of Washington, D.C.'s revolving door culture of influence peddling.
Indeed, the title at MSNBC says it all: "McCain economic policy shaped by lobbyist."
Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s national campaign general co-chair was being paid by a Swiss bank to lobby Congress about the U.S. mortgage crisis at the same time he was advising McCain about his economic policy, federal records show.
And it's not just plain ol' two faced lobbying. The bank in question is UBS, and Josh Marshall points out that the bank had a major interest in keeping the lid on the crisis itself.
Many of the lobbying connections the press has dug up on McCain have been embarassing. But I'm not sure any have really had teeth until this one. After all, how much does the average voter care that Charlie Black represented a lot of foreign dictators? A stench, yes? But finding out that McCain had a major subprime lender bank lobbyist whispering in his ear when McCain told the public that it was basically tough luck if they lost their houses?
In other words, Gramm's employer UBS would want the whole thing to be treated like a non-crisis due to its exposure to the bad loans. The more major political figures treat this like a not-so-big-deal, the better chance the bank would have to avoid major losses on the value of their subprime investments. And, of course, the bank would rather not have the mortgagees helped out at the expense of the mortgage holders: what good are subprime investments if the mortgage holders can't collect on the loans?
Back in March, with Gramm in the shadows and still registered as a UBS lobbyist, McCain gave a speech on mortgage lending where he proposed (wait for it) multiple studies in response to the mortgage crisis and decried bailouts for struggling mortgagees. That's right, his bold plan to address the mortgage crisis was to study the issue and to call for a very vague and limited government response. A modern day Herbert Hoover:
So, who is the new Hoover as this catastrophe unfolds?.... The honor goes to Bush wannabe John McCain, who said yesterday that he is "committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers," and rejected proposals by the Democratic candidates to help homeowners at risk as "sounding expensive." His proposal for dealing with the nation's greatest financial crisis in nearly a century is to convene a few panels to look into the problem, and maybe he will consider any proposals they make.
So, there you have it. Mr. Maverick's lobbyist problem grows. And Phil Gramm enters the campaign as the latest symbol of McCain's hypocrisy on lobbyists and influence.