Throw enough mud...
Since Sen. John McCain enlisted the help of former Sen. Phil Gramm for economic advice, various Dems have been testing out a variety of attacks on the economist from Texas, who was a highly popular pol before his retirement.
In the latest National Review (subscriber only, this free link may or may not work for you), Ramesh Ponnuru debunked some of the criticisms coming from the far left. Here's the intro:
Phil Gramm can’t say he wasn’t warned. The former Texas senator, now the co-chairman of John McCain’s presidential campaign, was a principal subject of a front-page Washington Post story on April 2. “Democratic opponents are already plotting attacks” on Gramm, reported Jonathan Weisman.
In the following two months, hit pieces on Gramm have appeared in The Nation, Salon, Mother Jones, The Huffington Post, and many other left-wing publications. For opposing regulation when he was a senator, Gramm is being blamed for contributing to Enron’s fraud, the high price of gas, and the mortgage meltdown. Keith Olbermann, the MSNBC ranter, even links him to 9/11. He has taken to referring to “John McCain’s Phil Gramm scandal.”
The attack on Gramm serves three goals for the Left. It discredits Gramm, McCain, and deregulation all at once. Gramm has been one of the most effective conservative legislators of his generation. He led the fight for Ronald Reagan’s first, and most conservative, budget, and led the fight against the Clintons’ health-care plan a decade later. Forcing McCain to dump Gramm would be payback for decades of conservative victories. Merely sullying his name might keep a President McCain from nominating him to be secretary of the Treasury.
But a full review of the facts exonerates Gramm.
The bulk of the article goes on the debunk the mudslinging, point by point. Fair use precludes me from posting blockquotes of it, but perhaps it will appear on NRO for free shortly (UPDATE: the other link may or may not work for you).
Ponnuru concludes with the following:
So far, the mainstream media have not followed the Left’s lead on Gramm. Their coverage has instead focused on two other issues. Reporters have raised the possibility that Gramm might sustain political damage because of investigations involving UBS, the large company where he is a vice chairman. And they have reported that within the last year he has lobbied Congress to stop a bill that would let bankruptcy judges rewrite mortgages. But if the investigations continue to stay far away from Gramm personally, they should not damage his reputation. The housing bill may not be much of a problem for Gramm, either. Even though the Democrats control the Senate, enough of them sided with the Republicans that a majority voted to defeat the bill.
Don’t be surprised, however, if some of the mud being thrown at Gramm makes its way from left-wing blogs to the mainstream press. The charges against Gramm are convoluted, and new ones keep being added. Few people will take the time to go through them. So even if the charges have no merit, they could put Gramm under a cloud.
In 2002, when Enron’s meltdown was in the headlines, several newspapers ran stories saying that Gramm had muscled an exemption for the company through Congress. Those stories were largely based on a paper put out by Public Citizen, a left-wing group founded by Ralph Nader. Many of those newspapers ended up having to run corrections. But some lies won’t die.
Right on cue today, the Houston Chronicle's generally useless D.C. bureau decided to run with the mudslinging from the Left, with one of those "critics say" sorts of pieces that help the newspaper get around actually assessing whether the claims have any merit:
Gramm's coterie of critics say his actions as a Texas senator contributed to today's mortgage meltdown and energy price speculation that has driven up oil prices.
"Gramm's particular area is opening up financial markets to untrammeled dominance by speculative forces," said James K. Galbraith, a University of Texas economist who is advising Democratic candidate Barack Obama. "He's the sorcerer's apprentice of financial instability and disaster."
Democrats also say that Gramm's post-Senate lobbying activities conflict with McCain's promise to steer clear of lobbyists in his presidential campaign. And left-leaning critics point at Gramm for turning McCain, a longtime fiscal conservative who voted against President Bush's tax cuts, into a supply-sider who wants to make those tax cuts permanent.
The Chronicle has learned that the Democratic National Committee is planning to launch a Web site to shine a negative light on the record of Gramm and two other top McCain economic advisers, former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and ex-Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin.
"With advisers like this, it's no wonder John McCain doesn't understand the economy," said DNC spokesman Damien LaVera. "John McCain's decision to outsource his economic agenda to people like Phil Gramm is one more reason he is the wrong choice for America's future."
Look for this story -- short on actual detail but full of unsubstantiated accusations -- to show up on all your favorite lefty blogs in short order.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 06/22/08 19:48 | American Politics | Technorati
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