McCain’s Stand Against Bernanke: Principle Not Pandering
Today the Senate voted to confirm Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Sen. John McCain however voted against the nomination, as he announced he would last week. Why?
Commentators like Michelle Malkin are eager to credit Senate opponent J.D. Hayworth for pushing McCain to take the conservative-populist stance on Bernanke and deny his reappointment. In their eyes, McCain is simply currying political favor from the far-right grassroots of the Arizona GOP who distrust the economic powers that be.
Malkin’s cause-effect calculation channels a common trope: conservative candidates like Hayworth and Rubio, by their mere existence, force RINO moderate candidates like Crist and McCain to be more conservative and, thus, more in tune with the American people.
But several factors complicate this narrative, at least in the case of Senator McCain and the Bernanke vote.
McCain could simply be making a vote on principle in support of his state of Arizona. The Grand Canyon State has been hit hard by the economic recession. America’s fastest growing state before the recession, Arizona is now ground zero for the recession.
Arizona finds itself with staggeringly high foreclosure rates and little hope for a renewal of the real estate-based sectors of the economy. The state is in terrible budgetary shape, perhaps even worse than California.
No one can criticize McCain, then, for perhaps wanting to shake things up at the top. McCain said:
Our country is still facing an economic crisis and while I appreciate the service that Chairman Bernanke has performed as Federal Reserve Chairman, I believe that he must be held accountable for many of the decisions that contributed to our financial meltdown.
Therefore, I plan to oppose Chairman Ben Bernanke’s confirmation for a new term as Federal Reserve Chairman.
Secondly, McCain has never really been consistent in his economic beliefs. Though he is mostly fiscally conservative and pro-free trade, he has a record of unpredictable changes in policy. Most notably, in September 2008, he shifted from stating that America’s economic fundamentals are “strong” to calling for an emergency meeting in D.C. to tend to the crisis.
Why, then, does his opposition to Bernanke surprise people?
Whatever you think of McCain’s economic positions, you should not be surprised when they change.
Sometimes they change because of McCain’s volatile mixture of progressive and conservative economic policy. Like his hero Teddy Roosevelt, McCain detests special interests’ concentrated economic power. This endears him to independents, but rankles hardcore conservatives like Malkin. Add this occasional progressive streak to a generally conservative or free market outlook, and McCain’s economics are predictably erratic.