Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.
That’s how Washington Post columnist George Will starts his new piece off, a damning look at how John McCain has handled the current economic crisis. Will concludes:
It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?
Will bases this off McCain’s temperment. Will argues that McCain too often likes to pit himself and anyone who agrees with him against those who betray the public trust, something that drives the Arizona senator to back legislation that increases government oversight and regulation, like the McCain-Feingold bill that put restrictions on campaign finance.
This comes right after the Wall Street Journal editorial page called McCain “unpresidential” for saying he would fire SEC chairman Chris Cox.
McCain has said before he would have a harder time swaying fiscal conservatives rather than cultural conservatives. With six weeks left before Nov. 4, now doesn’t seem the time to be losing the confidence of conservative commentators or publications.
