Pitney on McCain, Wall Street and the Economy

Professor Pitney’s expertise was recently featured in a Christian Science Monitor article about how the recent Wall Street failures and the resulting damage might affect McCain’s election odds. Pitney says that McCain is not necessarily going to be punished in the polls, but if the housing market gets any worse he might:

 The long-term impact of Wall Street’s crisis on the campaign has not yet played out.
“If this turns out to be a phenomenon with no immediate and direct impact on millions of Americans, it won’t necessarily have a big impact on the election,” says John Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif. “If all of a sudden everyone in the housing market suddenly finds out mortgages are unavailable, at that point it becomes a much bigger deal.”

Mr. Pitney also does not see McCain as trapped in a no-win situation. In calling for tightened regulation of Wall Street – a position that does not please free marketeers in the GOP – “McCain can say this is very much in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt,” says Pitney. “He can say, just because he’s a limited government conservative doesn’t mean he’s an antigovernment conservative.”