The Debate

Right, the focus last night was on the economy and what did the candidates have to offer two weeks after the first "foreign policy" debate with Jim Lehrer spent about half its running time on the economy? Two weeks later and, oh, let's say, a trillion dollars less in retirement account values later? Nothing, nada, rien new. Good jobs, middle-class Americans, he's going to raise your taxes, he wants to give the richest 5 percent a tax cut they aren't even asking for, etc., etc. You know the talking points, you could give them yourselves. And why nothing new? Because the two of them are like everybody else in these panic-whipped and uncharted waters -- nobody has a clue how to stop the downward spiral. It will stop when, to use the old fire-in-the-theater analogy, the fire burns itself out, somebody discovers that the fire was a few guys smoking big cigars illegally in the building (and doubtless causing some collateral, but not permanent, damage), or the theater burns to the ground. And nobody has the least idea which it will be, but none of the firefighting tools -- including today's rate cut -- have worked yet.

You could almost hear the relief from both of them when Brokaw and questions turned to foreign policy -- ah, here's a subject I don't know much about, but at least my talking points aren't being rendered irrelevant on a daily basis by the stock market.

Since incumbents pay of course, the whirlwind is playing out in Obama's favor and this election is for all intents and purposes over. Gives him about 100 days to figure out what he and everybody else -- including of course me -- remain clueless about.