What's Bad for America

I heard the keynote speeches at the Alfred E. Smith Benefit Dinner last Thursday night by both Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama. Both gave good speeches — I thought McCain's was better and more humorous, but both were good.

Thinking about it later, I remembered one of Obama's lines. I couldn't find it in the partial transcripts I ran across, but it was something like this: "With our nation's economy in such chaos, John McCain has said that, if the election is about the economy, he'll lose. So let's talk about the economy."

That fits in with what I've seen in Congress over the last several years. It's not that the Democrats' leadership in our Democrat-controlled Congress is actively trying to hurt the U.S. economy — I think — but they will do absolutely anything to make sure anything to make sure any bad news is blamed on anybody but them — preferably on George Bush.

But the behavior of the economy is also notable. Most of the economic damage during the Bush Administration has been in the last two years, since the Democrats took over Congress. Here's just one example, from early August.



That's not saying the Republicans are blameless. They certainly didn't get the job done when they had control of Congress, either, though some of that was due to Democrat obstructionism. And it can be argued that many elements of the economic cycles may be out of the control of Congresses and Presidents. Even so, it's worth keeping in mind while listening to the evening news that

        What's bad for the country is good for the Democrats

UPDATE: This post was originally published on October 19. It was deleted and re-published to get rid of comment spam. Comment moderation has been activated.