In the tank

When it came to writing my column this week, I was in about the same position as Sen. Barack Obama. At the risk of sounding harsh or callous, when the stock market tanked on Monday, it was almost like shooting fish in a barrel.

Over the past couple of weeks, coverage of the election has been centered on varying levels of attention to Gov. Sarah Palin, ranging from surprise to fawning, then to an all-out assault, and now to a pretty respectable level of analysis in which even conservatives are judging her pretty rationally.

But after Monday’s Dow Jones drop, the largest since September of 2001, the eye of the nation has finally shifted somewhat back to the issues, and that bodes very well for Barack Obama – especially because the issue is the economy, and his opponent is John McCain.

The economy has been Obama’s trump card throughout this campaign, mainly because of two simple truths. First of all, in election years in which the economy is perceived as being bad, the incumbent party often gets blamed, fairly or unfairly, and gets ousted. And second, John McCain has shown little to no political aptitude in navigating economic issues.

The second point is more important because, to be honest, voters have shown little interest in the past decade or so in getting rid of inept government officials, and McCain is actually somehow ahead at this point in some polls. But he has a history of slip-ups, gaffes and basic stupidity when it comes to the economy, and he’s lived up to that history in the past week or so.

On Thursday, before the focus had even changed, he made a pretty big mistake by saying, while trying to pump up Palin’s resume as a mayor and governor: “It’s easy for me to go to Washington and, frankly, be somewhat divorced from the day-to-day challenges people have.”  Most people probably already gathered that when he joked that people making $5 million a year are middle class, but it’s nice to hear it directly from him.

But he made an even bigger mistake Monday, when he claimed that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.” Honestly, the only way that makes any sense is if he’s referring to the capitalist system as a whole, and I highly doubt that was his intent. He has since backpedaled furiously, but Obama’s already seized on the statement as proof that McCain doesn’t know what he’s talking about, saying, “He doesn’t get what’s happening between the mountains in Sedona where he lives and the corridors of power where he works ... Why else would he say that the economy isn’t something he understands as well as he should?”

And Obama has a point. When a candidate picks as his economic adviser one of the people responsible for the Enron loophole and the deregulation that caused the mortgage crisis, it’s pretty easy to tell he doesn’t know what he’s doing. If Obama doesn’t make this his focus going forward, he’s a fool.