politics of the bailout

The Bush administration's bailout request emphatically highlights to the American people that Bush has royally screwed over the economy.

This point is important. Many of us knew this already, but the message that the Bush admin has been sending is that everything's going okay, maybe a little sluggish. Sometimes they blame it on 9/11; sometimes they point out that unemployment or inflation is better than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

But, a request for $700 billion to bailout corporations that have been feeding at the trough is a clear admission that the repubs screwed up bigtime: importantly, it's a message that the median voter immediately understands.