Bush's sad finale - Reaping the whirlwind
Plenty of people can be blamed for the calamity on Capitol Hill on September 29th. Two-hundred and twenty-eight congressmen decided they were ready to risk another Great Depression. Nancy Pelosi made an idiotic speech damning the Republicans. Sheriff McCain claimed that he was going to ride into town to sort out the mess—and promptly fell off his horse. But there is no doubt where the lion’s share of the blame belongs: with George Bush. The dismal handling of the financial crisis over the past fortnight is not only a comment on Mr Bush’s personal shortcomings as a leader. It is a comment on the failure of his leadership style over the past eight years.
The crisis underlined Mr Bush’s two biggest personal weaknesses—his leaden tongue and his indecisiveness. He failed to explain in simple language that a crisis on Wall Street also means a crisis on Main Street. The self-styled decider was also singularly lacking in decisiveness. He handed responsibility for the bail-out to a technocrat, his treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, but then failed to provide him with the necessary political backup. He started lobbying legislators only days before the vote. He failed to travel to Capitol Hill to make a personal appeal to Congress. Worse still, he wasted political capital on a farcical photo-op meeting in the White House with the presidential candidates. Mr Clinton would have done things a lot better.
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