John McCain Indicts John McCain

[Via Paul Krugman and Kos]

Trying to bamboozle the American public into believing that he had nothing to do with Republican policies that precipitated the Wall Street meltdown, John McCain has donned the cloak of a regulator – an outsider who will march into Washington and fix the banking sector.

There is just one problem. The truth has a way of reasserting itself.

John McCain and his friend Phil "Americans are a bunch of whiners" Gramm have been leading the charge on deregulation of the banking sector for the last decade. John McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby for deregulation of the banking sector. But, John McCain would have you forget all that as he bobs and weaves to keep his waning campaign afloat.

Unfortunately for John McCain, he decided to pen an article for this month’s Contingencies magazine. In the article he bragged that he would do to healthcare what he had done to banking: he would deregulate it. He wrote:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

It is too bad the magazine has already gone to press. I am sure the newly remade John McCain – the maverick regulator – would like to take that article back.