Why McCain's afraid to debate

He doesn't want you to be thinking about him so much right now while this economic crisis is eating up your retirement savings, further devaluing your home, and generally scaring the bejesus out of us all. It's why he pulled his campaign ads (come on, who really believes that running ads would keep him from doing his job as a senator this week?), and it's why he's afraid to show up tonight. See, if the media spends too much time talking about McCain in conjunction with this debacle, you might start learning something about him that you may not have known, and you may not see him so favorably.

Facts:

1. Mr. McCain has admitted publicly on more than one occasion that he doesn't know much about economics.
2. Mr. McCain surrounds himself with advisers who bear a very real burden of responsibility for putting our economy into the crisis it's in today.
3. Mr. McCain himself has been directly involved in nefarious dealings that led to an economic crisis in our country's recent history.

Let's explore each of these a little more fully. First, his admission that he doesn't know much about economics. Instead of me explaining this one, why don't you just get it straight from the horse's mouth. Do you really think this guy can provide leadership in tough economic times if he doesn't understand WHY they're tough, much less HOW they're tough for the average American (Mr. Seven Homes and Eleven Cars)?

Next, McCain's advisers: three of the biggies are Phil Gramm, Carly Fiorina, and Rick Davis. If you're mad about our collapsing financial markets, a good person to direct your anger at is Phil Gramm. In 1999, then-U.S. Senator Phil Gramm sponsored and passed a sweeping deregulation of the banking industry. He followed that up in 2000 with a second new law that forbade the Securities and Exchange Commission from regulating certain kinds of commodities trading. The lack of regulation in the banking industry, specifically in commodities trading and mortgage lending, is what really got us to where we are today (aka deep financial doo-doo). Thanks Phil! I bet a lot of CEOs just love you, but I don't so much.

What did Mr. Gramm do when he left the U.S. Senate? Well, he went to work as a lobbyist for banking giant USB. Wasn't that a convenient turn of events for Mr. Gramm? And what does Mr. Gramm do now, you ask? He recently had to resign as cochair of Senator John McCain's election campaign because people objected when he publicly called Americans a "nation of whiners" and said we were only suffering from a "mental" recession. This is one of the main sources McCain goes to for economic advice. Do you think he's looking out for you and me in his off-time from lobbying for USB and schmoozing for McCain? I doubt it.

Another person McCain relies on for economic advice is Carly Fiorina. You remember her -- she's the one who nearly ran Hewlett-Packard into the ground a few years ago and had to lay off 20,000 people. Then she took a severance package when they let her go that was valued at somewhere between $21 million and $42 million, depending on who you ask. Apparently four union pension funds are suing HP to get that back, by the way. I hope she goes broke and her house goes into foreclosure.

Then there's Nr. McCain's third favorite economic adviser, campaign manager Rick Davis. He's the guy who said McCain didn't need to "write down" an economic plan. Apparently winging it is good enough for the guy who has openly claimed he doesn't know a lot about economics. Guess what Mr. Davis does when he's not busy with the McCain campaign? He's a lobbyist. He owns a firm that has been on retainer with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to help them avoid government regulation. Well, that turned out well for us, didn't it? He said yesterday that it's been over a year since he did any work for the mortgage giants, but records found by media outlets including NPR have shown that the retainer fee was paid as recently as last month. Liar liar pants on fire.

And last but not least, let's talk about the Keating Five. Remember our last big banking crisis? In 1989, a bunch of savings and loans went under and the federal government had to come to the rescue. One of them was the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, headed by a "gentleman" by the name of Charles H. Keating, Jr. When that particular bank went under, it came out that five U.S. senators had been improperly aiding this guy in his illegal behavior. He gave them a total of more than $1 million in campaign contributions, and in return, these five senators went to work to keep federal regulators' noses out of Mr. Keating's business. These five guys came to be known as the "Keating Five." Guess who one of the five was? John McCain. He was one of two guys among the five that were ultimately cleared of blatant illegal behavior by the Senate Ethics Committee, but was admonished for exercising "poor judgment."

Isn't that what it really comes down to here? Judgment? I don't know about you, but I think Mr. McCain has a serious deficit when it comes to judgment on this subject.

So this is why Mr. McCain wants you to be thinking about things other than him this week. It's why he pulled his ads off TV, and it's why he doesn't want to debate tonight. Even though this debate isn't supposed to be about the economy, he just doesn't want to stand up in front of the American people as the guy who not only doesn't know how to solve this problem, but had at the very least an indirect hand in creating it and openly seeks advice from people who had a very direct hand in causing it. Coward.