McCain and the Social Contract

John McCain's campaign sent out a memo this morning ("In Case I Missed It." They're helpful that way.) highlighting Senator McCain's remarks on the current economic meltdown. Since I'm trying to make up for all of those disloyal questions I used to ask on press calls, I will comply. Here's McCain, from his own memo, on "Morning Joe":

"I was talking about the fundamentals of America, which is the workers, their productivity, their innovation, their incredible performance for many, many years. And what I was saying is and it's clear if you look at my remarks and that is that Wall Street has betrayed us. They've broken the social contract between capitalism and the average citizen and the worker. And workers are paying a very heavy price while a lot of them are not only emerging unscathed but some of them are left with packages of a hundred million dollars or so. This is a result of excess and greed and corruption. And that's exactly what is plaguing Americans today. And we got to fix it and we've got to update our regulatory system. We have to have a 9/11 commission to find out what went wrong and to fix what's going to happen in the future so this never ever happens again. And as president, I guarantee you, it will never happen again."

This is a philosophical sea change for McCain, and I applaud him for it. First of all, the idea of a "social contract" is a revolutionary one for a Republican candidate to have. I am anxious to see if the concept extends beyond bailing out banks, and into things like healthcare.

McCain correctly identifies the current regulatory climate as the problem. Although his top economic adviser, Phil Gramm, bears a lot of the responsibility for this, along with McCain's 90% support of the Bush adminmistration, he is man enough to say, "I was wrong."

Of course, we need tighter regulations on financial markets, and McCain is making the Maverick move in pointing this out. I know things move fast, so I guess the new, pro-government McCain didn't get this memo to Sarah Palin in time to keep her from saying ""too often government is the problem." That's OK, I'll send it along. He also hasn't updated his website, which still only mentions regulations in the context of gutting them.

I'm also glad that Tucker Bounds was apparently able to talk McCain down from his original "clarification" on the "fundamentals" of our economy, which was to be that the economy is strong at the molecular level. Nothing panics the public like a weak electron.

Tommy Christopher co-hosts "Unusable Signal" , on BlogTalkRadio Tues & Thur at 9pm, and Wed, Fri, & Sat at 11pm. Click here for the Unusable Signal homepage.

My wiseguy remarks notwithstanding, McCain's remarks are actually not even that good. He implies a flip-flop/change of heart, but read his words carefully. He says the "social contract" is between capitalism and the citizenry. This is an oxymoron, like an agreement with an anarchist.

On regulations, he says we need to "update" them. Dollars (or cents on the dollar) to doughnuts he means even less regulation than we have now, or that's what he'll tell his base when they hear these Rousseau-like pronouncements.

Don't take my word for it. Check his website, and find me anything on there that will address this situation.