Remember the scenes in Titanic after the ship collided with the ice berg? When the poor people were up to their ankles in the cold north Atlantic waters, and the rich folk were asking what that little bump was, and if the stewards could bring them some tea?
The folks in steerage are American citizens stuck in a dire situation... water pouring into their tiny rooms.
The rich passengers are the rich, of course...
The stewards are the McCain campaign, telling passengers that they've probably just thrown a propeller blade and that they'll be back underway soon! Nothing to worry about! Return to your staterooms!
The Titanic is the American economy... slowly going down by the head.
By now, we've all heard McCain's economic brain Phil Gramm call us a nation of whiners, and that the recession is all in our heads...
"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. "We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet."
"We have sort of become a nation of whiners," he said. "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline" despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.
"We've never been more dominant; we've never had more natural advantages than we have today," he said. "We have benefited greatly" from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years.
McCain offered some lip-service scorn to Gramm, but quietly readmitted him to his campaign staff shortly thereafter.
On Sunday the 14th comes word of yet another McCain economic adviser, Donald Luskin, echoing Gramm's sentiment in an op-ed piece in the WaPo, calling us a Nation of Exaggerators this time.
McCain campaign adviser and former U.S. senator Phil Gramm was right in July when he said that our current state "is a mental recession." Maybe he was out of line when he added that the United States has become "a nation of whiners." But when it comes to the economy, we have surely become a nation of exaggerators.
...
Whatever the political outcome this year, hopefully this will prove to be yet another instance of that iron law of economics and markets: The sentiment of the majority is always wrong at key turning points. And the majority is plenty pessimistic right now. That suggests that we're on the brink not of recession, but of accelerating prosperity.
Maybe this will turn out to be the best of times -- at least since the Great Depression.
I was worried for a second. A lot of people are losing their homes because of mortgage foreclosures. Turns out it was just grumbling sentiment! I'm glad it was all just an exaggeration. Phew!
Whoops. Luskin writes this op-ed just hours before Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Merril Lynch narrowly avoided doing the same by being taken over by Bank of America.
I CAN SMELL THE ACCELERATING PROSPERITY, CAN YOU???
If his advisors are any indication, John McCain seems perfectly intent on solving our economic problems by pretending they don't exist!
This is terrible news for us regular folks... but it also offers a glimmer of hope. Strategically, this is a great start to the week for Obama. This grim economic news will pry the media away from talking about Sarah Palin and all that moose puckey, and focus its attention right where it belongs: on the economy.
The economy is the LAST thing John McCain wants to talk about, and it being front and center will destroy his Palin bump faster than I destroy a donut from Krispy Kreme :P
Obama needs to be out there talking about this at every opportunity. And all of us phonebanking and canvassing need to talk about it too. Remind everyone that Obama's tax plan will put more money in our pockets than McCain's would... and that McCain thinks the economy is hunky dory right now!
Hopefully Obama can do something no one in 1912 could do... stop the Titanic from sinking.