Hank Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs/Treasury Secretary and catalyst of the financial crisis, has a new book out! Fortunately, it’s not all about him making people poor, but he also shows how ridiculous and hilarious John McCain was/is. (you still got it in my book)
This is regarding Mr. McCain suspending his campaign during 2008 to “address the economy” which was in shambles.
McCain wanted a meeting at the White House, and the president felt he had no choice but to accommodate him.
I called Obama right away. He said that he would try to be as constructive as possible but that the Democrats were doing their part and I had better keep in touch with McCain. The president was scheduled to give a major speech that evening making the case for TARP, but news of McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign dominated the rest of the afternoon.
We’d devised TARP to save the financial system. Now it had become all about politics—presidential politics. I wondered what McCain could have been thinking. Calling a meeting like this when we didn’t have a deal was playing with dynamite.
So it’s meeting time at the White House and all the big kids are there including President Bush, VP Cheney, Congressional leaders, Hank Paulson and other economic advisers, Barack Obama, and John McCain, who had called for this meeting.
The president asked me to speak, and I once again described the dire conditions in the market and the need for emergency powers. When I finished, the president said he had a simple test for making a decision on this: “If Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke say it’s going to work and help stabilize the financial system, we are for it.”
By protocol, the president turned to call on the speaker of the House. And when Nancy Pelosi spoke, it was clear the Democrats had done their homework and had planned a skillful response for McCain.
[...]Ms. Pelosi said that Obama would represent the Democrats. Then Obama sketched the broad outlines of the problem and stressed the need for immediate action. He said the Democrats had been working closely with me; Obama ran through the rough terms of the morning’s discussion on the Hill, then he mentioned the need for adjustments on oversight and executive compensation, as well as help for homeowners. He spoke without notes–much less a teleprompter–and spoke eloquently. “The Democrats will deliver the votes,” he asserted.
Now Obama and the Democrats were skillfully setting up the story line that McCain’s intervention had polarized the situation and that Republicans were walking away from an agreement. It was brilliant political theater that was about to degenerate into farce. Skipping protocol, the president turned to McCain to offer him a chance to respond: “I think it’s fair that I give you the chance to speak next.”
But McCain demurred. “I’ll wait my turn,” he said. It was an incredible moment, in every sense. This was supposed to be McCain’s meeting–He’d called it, not the President, who had simply accommodated the Republican candidate’s wishes. Now it looked as if McCain had no plan at all–his idea had been to suspend his campaign and summon us all to this meeting. It was not a strategy, it was a political gambit, and the Democrats had matched it with one of their own…
…Finally, raising his voice over the din, Obama said loudly, “I’d like to see what Senator McCain has to say, since we haven’t heard from him yet.”
The room went silent and all eyes shifted to McCain, who sat quietly in his chair, holding a single note card. He glanced at it quickly and proceeded to make a few general points… As he spoke, I could see Obama chuckling. McCain’s comments were anticlimactic, to say the least. His return to Washington was impulsive and risky, and I don’t think he had a plan in mind.
It got so ridiculous that Vice President Cheney started laughing. Frankly, I’d never seen anything like it before in politics or business—or in my fraternity days at Dartmouth, for that matter. Finally, the president just stood up and said: “Well, I’ve clearly lost control of this meeting. It’s over.”
And thus it’s been since; a disturbing lack of policy or any input whatsoever from McCain and his cronies. But seriously, wow. I almost feel bad for the old guy except I remember that he pulled this whole stunt to score a few political points for his bid at the Presidency. What a joke.