Eagleionline

Kent Greenfield is a professor at Boston College Law School.  This story is crossposted at the Huffington Post. Click over and Digg his story!

Barack Obama caught flak a few weeks back when he traveled to the Middle East and Europe. Apparently, he was just too presidential. After eight years of George Bush, that wasn’t too hard. He refrained from giving neck rubs to European heads of state and had the audacity to give speeches in which the sentences achieved subject - verb agreement.

How dare he go overseas and not produce a collective cringe from those of us back home? Who does he think he is?

But Obama never purported to speak for the United States in the middle of an international crisis, which is now what John McCain has done.

The international hot spot of the moment is Georgia, where Russian troops continue on the offensive. It’s a complicated and perilous situation, with innocent civilians in danger and regional stability at risk.

John McCain has waded into the situation with both feet, and not only on his own behalf. Apparently McCain telephoned Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Tuesday, and, according to McCain himself, told him “that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, today, we are all Georgians.” McCain told supporters at a campaign event that Saakashvili “wanted me to say thank you to you, to give you his heartfelt thanks for the support of the American people.”

It’s fine and good for the presidential candidates to express support for one side or the other, or to issue calls for restraint, or to express solidarity with the innocent civilians who are at risk.

But it strikes me as presumptuous indeed for McCain to telephone the president of one of the warring nations and to purport to speak for the American people, especially when McCain’s statement seems to promise something serious. What exactly does “we are all Georgians” mean? I don’t know, but McCain thinks he can speak for all of us in promising it. It’s as if McCain is running a shadow State Department out of the Straight Talk Express.

Saakashvili called McCain’s bluff on Wednesday, saying on CNN: “Yesterday, I heard Sen. McCain say, ‘We are all Georgians now.’ Well, very nice, you know, very cheering for us to hear that, but OK, it’s time to pass from this. From words to deeds.”

This is dangerous stuff. We have a president of a warring nation responding to McCain’s comments as if the Republican nominee is setting policy for the nation, and asking us to back up the straight talk with substance.

Doesn’t anyone else think it’s odd that John McCain is the one who seems to be speaking for the United States at the moment? Isn’t that the epitome of presumptuousness?

 Cross-posted at the Huffington Post.

News comes today of a proposed government rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the nation’s largest finance companies. Investors are deserting the companies as they have become increasingly alarmed that the companies do not have enough capital to cover losses brought on by the reeling housing market. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. announced the proposed bailout on Sunday, explaining that a failure of the two companies would deal a staggering blow to the U.S. economy.

This is the second time in four months that the government has stepped in to rescue a major financial institution. In March, the Treasury Department helped arrange the sale of investment bank Bear Stearns, saying at the time that the economy was too fragile for such a large financial institution to fail.

Based on this sample, I’ve discovered the secret to having this administration care about your financial well-being:

1. Mismanage your finances, especially by overextending yourself by investing in dubious investments;
2. Be too big to fail.

Luckily, many of us have already begun to take these principles to heart. Americans are notoriously poor savers, and household debt now stands at historic highs (equal to over 130% of disposable income, according to the Economic Policy Institute).

So under the first condition for government assistance, we’re all doing poorly, that is, well. We are piling up debt by putting our money in poor investment instruments.

Personally, I have piled up debt investing in things such as vacations for my family, gasoline for my SUV, and a flat-screen television. There is absolutely no chance that any of these investments will pay off. Fannie Mae has nothing on me.

The second condition is more problematic. I have not amassed enough debt that anyone outside my own family would care. If my “investment” by way of VISA in a new Wii for the living room doesn’t pay off, I will have no one to rescue me.

My problem is that I have been too small-minded. I shouldn’t buy one Wii. I should by 10. I should invest in a larger SUV, or maybe a large power boat — I hear they’re real gas guzzlers. I should seek out opportunities to pay full retail. I should answer every one of those credit card mailings I get.

That way, other people will slowly become invested in my continued financial mismanagement. If I amass enough debt, my failure to pay bills would undermine the stability of the whole economy. My problem so far is that I haven’t failed enough.

But this insight works even better if others jump on board the poor investment bandwagon. Even if your name isn’t Fannie, you too can mismanage your finances on a gigantic scale.

This is an effort that would benefit from collective action. Just imagine if we all pooled our efforts and failed together, and spectacularly. Only through grand failure can we succeed.

Meet you at the Hummer dealer. Bring your credit card. In fact, bring two.