Rush to misjudgment

A crisis that has been brewing for years takes a turn for the worse.  A government that has ignored the problem, acted like it didn't exist because it conflicted with their ideologically-approved vision of the world, suddenly wakes up—and immediately goes into full, hyperventilating panic.

"Do it now," they say, "and do it our way, or life as we know it will come to an end.  These are desperate times and they call for desperate measures.  Discuss, deliberate, and dissent all you want, but we need your answer by Monday.  Anyone who opposes our rush to judgment is playing politics, unpatriotic, even traitorous.  We're not saying it's our way or the highway, we're saying it's our way or nothing and the ship sinks with all hands.  And yours will be dirty while ours will be clean because we tried, and you didn't listen."

Sound familiar?  It should.  That's the way we were bum-rushed into the war in Iraq and that's the way we're being frog-marched over a trillion dollar cliff right this minute.  A government that has no foresight, no hindsight, no idea what the hell is going on until all hell breaks loose is at it again.

They've been deregulating the economy since Reagan, making billionaires by the bushel and bragging about it, kiting checks until the deficit got so big it didn't seem to matter anymore, while at the same time shrinking government into hopeless, limp-weenie impotence.  This has been the work of a generation—that's how long it took to turn the New Deal into a no-limits game of Texas Hold-em—and in a single month it all went bust.

It was bound to happen.  If you keep betting the farm—over and over, with each "free market" bubble and burst—sooner or later you're going to wind up living in the city in a cheap downtown condo, six months behind on the mortgage, with foreclosure notices hanging off a magnet on the fridge.

Once again our fearless leaders are scared witless.  Once again we are told to act now or die.  Once again we know that the devil is in the details but there are no details.  The details are being worked out by fixers in rooms that used to be smoke-filled, back before the fixers cared more about their health than ours.

This is government by panic.  This is a bunch of guys with their eyes bugging out of their heads and a suitcase full of cash in their arms, running through the streets, screaming "Feets don't fail me now!"

We've seen this cartoon before.  After 9/11 we reacted—went after the bad guys in Afghanistan, tightened up homeland security and made some common sense intelligence reforms—but we didn't stop there.  We blew right past reacting to overreacting, to hyperreacting, from a small, necessary war in Afghanistan to a tragic, morbidly-irrelevant monster of a war in Iraq.  Common sense intelligence reforms became stupid, constitution-shredding breaches of trust, a sympathetic world was ignored and abused into totally unnecessary opposition, our united country ripped in half, both halves spending more time, energy and bile fighting each other than our enemies.

We've been seven years digging out of that hole, and we're still digging.  That's what we got for panic dressed up as decisiveness.  And we're about to do it again.

Here's what they're asking.  "Give us another big blank check, sign right here, and don't ask questions.  Do it for the economy, do it for our people, do it for the children, do it for America, and do it right now.  If you don't do it, if you don't panic right along with us, then you must not care about the economy, the people and our children, and you hate America.

Well, as the old saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, fool me 137 times and China takes over the world."

This time when they say "Right away," we need to say "No way.  We've got a new government coming in a couple of months, we're gonna pass.  Muddle through, do some piecemeal, company-by-failed-company bailouts, don't make plans, just put out fires as best you can and don't worry, we know you, we don't expect much.

"Come January we'll have a new president, a cool president, a president who doesn't do panic.  We are going to try a new tactic: thoughtful, considered deliberation leading to well-crafted, non-ideological legislation.  It may take a while, Wall Street may have to endure a few more nervous days, but it's our only chance to Get It Right."

This isn't 9/11, it isn't Pearl Harbor, it's not even the Great Depression.  And it won't be, if we don't panic.  We have nothing to fear but panic itself.  We have nothing to fear but a rush to misjudgment.  Panic is what gets us into depressions—mortgage panics, stock market panics, bank panics, government panics—but you cannot panic your way out of one.

So back on the campaign trail, John McCain, get out of Washington, talk to the people and try listening, too.  Above all, stop spreading panic.  All the fears you stoke about Obama, Iraq and Big Government aren't half as scary as the crazy moves you keep making trying to CPR your dying campaign back to life.  We have a serious decision to make in six weeks; we intend to make the right one—calmly.  No panicking allowed.