Speaking of The New York Times, and Mr. Krugman, his column appears on today’s Op-Ed page, across from William Kristol’s. Mr. Kristol’s column, entitled, Fire the Campaign, offers this observation:

“The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic. If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed.”

He is, of course, correct. The McCain campaign, McCain himself, is a picture of erratic ignorance. Senator McCain is not an unintelligent man, but one who consistently makes poor and ill-informed, if not outright uninformed decisions. 

Kristol continues, essentially making the argument against McCain, and stating McCain

“…should tell the truth — we’re in uncharted waters, no one is certain what to do, and no one knows what the situation will be on Jan. 20, 2009. But what we do know is that we could use someone as president who’s shown in his career the kind of sound judgment and strong leadership we’ll need to make it through the crisis.”

As is often the case, Kristol is just wrong (as is evidenced here, here, especially here, and, oh heck, just look here), and now wrong in insisting “no one is certain what to do”. Read (now) Nobel-winning Paul Krugman’s piece, “Gordon Does Good“, in which he writes:

“…the Brown government has shown itself willing to think clearly about the financial crisis, and act quickly on its conclusions. And this combination of clarity and decisiveness hasn’t been matched by any other Western government, least of all our own.”

Right now, the DOW is up almost 600 points, following similar increases in European and Asian markets. The general consensus is that this weekend’s G7 meeting was sufficiently successful, and the huge infusion of capital is calming fears enough to give the markets some stability. Krugman continues:

“At a special European summit meeting on Sunday, the major economies of continental Europe in effect declared themselves ready to follow Britain’s lead, injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into banks while guaranteeing their debts. And whaddya know, Mr. Paulson — after arguably wasting several precious weeks — has also reversed course, and now plans to buy equity stakes rather than bad mortgage securities (although he still seems to be moving with painful slowness).”

Once again, the Right (McCain) and its mired-in-the-mud proponents (Kristol) miss the point, which is this: it takes intelligent leaders who are willing to gather information and informed and intelligent advisors, (such as prime minister Gordon Brown, and as Senator Obama have done,) and consider other perspectives to move the ball forward. And it shouldn’t take a Nobel-winner to see this simple truth. Unfortunately, Senator McCain hasn’t, and most likely never will.

Three thousand six words that crescendoed with thirty four words that, much like the argument about last week’s $700+ billion bailout, was the “slam-dunk” argument convincing Americans that the risk of not going to war far outweighed the risk of going to war:

America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

For many Americans, including myself, the image of a mushroom cloud, perhaps over my home in my beloved Manhattan, was far too compelling to ignore any longer. And Bush did succeed in taking us to war, through fear and intimidation, but with little facts, as it now appears he has succeeded in taking us to the cleaners, through fear and intimidation, but with little facts.

Though early in the race, we are already seeing signs of success similar to those we saw under his calamitous reign over the war: huge drops in the markets, worldwide, loss of confidence, worldwide, loss of personal net-worth, worldwide, loss of jobs, worldwide. Yesterday’s (albeit somewhat recovered but nevertheless historic) 800 point drop in the DOW, Russian markets having to close twice, even the fact that the second most-Googled term right now is “commercial paper”, leads anyone to believe that we are in for a long, cold winter, and unfortunately spring, summer, and fall.

No one is expecting any economy to recover in the near term. Bush’s fear mongering has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, although not in the form he predicted. He has been wrong on every count. There were no weapons of mass destruction. The markets essentially collapsed despite passage of the $700+ billion bailout bill. We learned Friday that another 159,000 jobs were lost in September, the ninth straight month of job losses, adding up to three quarters of a million lost jobs this year alone. Unemployment stands at a staggering 6.1%. On his Sunday talk show, John McLaughlin predicted next year unemployment will go over 11%. 

Have no doubt, Americans now have images of bread lines entering their heads. Right now, 60% of Americans “believe another economic depression is likely“. There is a huge rise in the use of the words “fear” and “panic” in the media. And for all this, we have Mr. Bush’s incompetence, ignorance, and lack of intelligence to blame. Right now, I pray for an “elite president”. 

By the way, President Bush had the audacity to quote John F. Kennedy in the very next sentence of his “Mushroom Cloud” speech.

As President Kennedy said in October of 1962: “Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small.

If only Bush had listened to the words he had repeated. Let me leave you, and President Bush, and Senator McCain with another quote from John F. Kennedy, from his inauguration in 1961:

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.