killer buffalo

National polls give Senator Obama an eight to ten point lead over Senator McCain going into the final week of the 2008 campaign, and unsurprisingly CNN projects Mr. Obama to have already captured enough states to win the 270 electoral votes necessary to become president. Meanwhile Mr. McCain, lying close to defeat while the financial markets on Wall St. whisper “recession,” has attacked Mr. Obama for wanting to “spread the wealth around,” accusing his policies of being “socialist,” a move that has been met with little effect.  Before he devotes himself too thoroughly to the defender of free-market capitalism, he ought to take a look at the economy’s approval ratings.

Each of the last four election year economic recessions has yielded a president of the party opposing the incumbent and three of the four elections have produced a Democrat—Mr. Kennedy in 1961, Mr. Carter in 1976, and Mr. Clinton in 1991.  But even though these politicians were elected primarily to address economic instability, their record in solving it has been mixed.  While Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Clinton managed to reverse the downward economic trend, Mr. Carter’s presidency drove the American economy into greater recession.  In addition each president—Mr. Clinton included—left the national debt higher than they had found it.

It’s no secret that recessions love Democrats—when more people are unemployed or lacking health insurance they look to the government that will provide the most aid even if that means compromising capitalist values.  Voters have too proven they are willing to put aside ideological disagreements on foreign policy in order to pursue economic well-being at home, even when that home is being foreclosed upon.

Yet putting contemporary specifics aside, the changes in party that followed the recessions of the past half-century are indicative of America’s strong partisan ties.  They show that the guilt by association logic that Mr. McCain has used with little effect on Mr. Obama and Reverend Wright, translates better against a candidate whose party’s leader has supervised a recession from the White House windows.

For this reason Mr. Obama has only needed to convince angered Americans that he is solidly Democratic to secure the election.  Mr. McCain, on the other hand, has been given a much more difficult job where he has neither failed completely nor completely executed; he has needed to persuade voters that he is both not a Republican—at least not exclusively so—and that Mr. Bush is not a Republican—that his failures do not reflect the flawed fundamentals of conservative ideals.  Of course if Mr. McCain loses, and he likely will, and if Mr. Obama’s term correlates with a strengthening American economy, it will be the next Republican’s job to defibrillate the heartbeat of capitalism.

-David Lamb

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