Gov. Palin on Foxnews: Economy is a 'Mess,' Workforce is Strong

Sarah Palin, in her second media interview since becoming John McCain’s running mate, told FOX News Wednesday that the economy is a “mess” and defended the Republican presidential nominee against charges that he believes the markets are merely experiencing a hiccup.

Palin told FOX News’ Sean Hannity that it was “unfair” for Barack Obama to criticize McCain earlier in the week for saying “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.” She said McCain was clearly talking about the workforce.

“It was an unfair attack on the verbiage that Senator McCain chose to use, because … he means our workforce, he means the ingenuity of the American people,” Palin said. “And of course that is strong and that is the foundation of our economy. So that was an unfair attack there.”

McCain’s campaign needs to get out in front on a few things.
It’s really sad that they haven’t already, really. It looks like McCain’s campaign is reacting politically on 0bama’s turf. This is the wrong thing to do. Instead, McCain should be playing experience up again. But not ‘experience’ in general, but rather his specific legistlative experience.

McCain sponsored a bill in 2005 to reform Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, so why is he playing defense to 0bama on this issue? What was 0bama doing in 2005? I doubt he even knew what Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac were back then. McCain needs to be presenting himself as a knowledgeable and experienced manager who has seen these problems coming for a long time, because he is, and he has. Why his reaction has been what it has been makes no sense at all. It’s not reinforcing confidence in him as a leader who can be turned to in troubled times. If McCain frames the situation in easy to understand terms, and makes the case for his own expertise in dealing with these issues — something 0bama simply cannot match — then McCain wins this argument. But so far, 0bama is clearly winning it, and that’s a damn shame. Instead of turning to populism and pandering, McCain should be turning to experience and knowledge.

McCain talks about making pork barrelers ‘famous’. Well, right now he should be making Franklin Raines famous. Very famous. And Robert Rubin. Both of these men are responsible for the banking crisis, and both men are 0bama advisers. McCain needs to lead a charge against them.

McCain needs to be placing the blame squarely on Rubin and the Clinton administration for repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, instead of blaming Bush. Simply blaming Bush won’t help. In fact it hurts McCain. Because no matter how much McCain distances himself from Bush, he is still going to be more closely tied to Bush’s than 0bama. To the extent that Bush’s policies are blamed, it harms McCain.

The correct way for him to distance himself from Bush is as a manager. He should blame not Bush policies, as that only sticks to himself, but Bush’s management style and priorities. If he wants to distance himself from Bush, it should be as a serious manager who is more interested in solving problems than playing politics. It’s not Bush’s overall philosophies that are unpopular. It is the way he implemented them — or didn’t.

McCain should paint a picture of how he would govern day to day as a manager behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office that differs from both Bush and 0bama. It’s called Leadership. McCain has a huge Leadership advantage over 0bama, so he ought to be exploiting it right now.

McCain should also me calling for more than a commission to look into the problems on Wall Street. He should be calling for a special prosecutor to investigate these 0bama advisers. Right now, Nancy Pelosi is putting together a team of all of the Democrats in congress who are responsible for the meltdown to place the blame on Bush. McCain should not be part of their chorus. He should be offering an alternate view. He should be placing the blame on the guys Nancy has appointed to cover up their mess.

Also McCain should be highlighting 0bama’s recent comments about McCain’s ‘outrage’ at Wall Street, where 0bama says that cutting taxes is an odd way to ‘punish’ them. McCain needs to put these words into perspective. 0bama is saying that investors should be PUNISHED, and the way to do that is raise their taxes. That view speaks volumes about 0bama. McCain needs to point that out.

You are absolutely right on your points, I would just add, I hope that you didn’t say this already in a way I didn’t understand, that there needs to be more focus on the positives of the economy. Lets talk about what is going right, the one thing as Governor Palin pointed out is that we have a strong workforce, that isn’t talked about enough. We have investment opportunities, if I was a stockbroker, I could tell you what they are, bottom line is there is always no matter what kind of economy we have someone is making money. I believe that what we have right now isn’t a mess, but reform is obviously neccessary. It still works for the majority and that should be considered, we don’t want to go backwards and make things worse for the middle class by putting someone like 0bama in who will raise payroll taxes and tax their profit when they sell their homes.

Agree almost 100%. The current wall street melt-down goes way back to Clinton. Nov. 11, 1999 He signed the bill to change the way banks do business-the biggest change since the great depression.

The repeal of the 1933 Glass-Stegal Act restricting the relationship between commercial banks and Insurance companies and Investment banks was supposed to improve competition and provide stability.LOL. See the results? Not stable.

The democrats blocked efforts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2006-an effort to limit taxpayer risk. Rangel said these organizations are sound, and the reforms would hurt low-income people who would not be able to buy homes. They required financial institutions to make loans that would not have been approved as creditworthy. Now they are successfully hanging it on Bush and GOP.

McCain is not capitalizing on a great opportunity to hang this on the Dems and Obama.

This is the McCain talking point. Palin has no choice but to parrot his line.

Focus groups have probably told McCain that voters will not buy the “economic fundamentals are strong” argument. mcCain cannot afford to let himself get attached to Bush. McCain should not have said “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” on Monday.

Better to have said: we are experiencing a tough economic stretch, and I have an agenda to fix our problems. etc etc

The main problem with McCain is that even if he can get his talking points straight, he can barely string 3 or 4 coherent words together.

I am sick and tired of having presidential candidates who cannot speak with any adequacy, clarity, or resonance, let alone passion or eloquence.

This is not a matter of comparing Reagan to everyone else. Dole, Bush 41, Bush 43 and now McCain are all lousy communicators.

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