Notwithstanding a compelling plea from our outgoing president and Treasury secretary, who have no significant future political skin in the game, and a bipartisan team of lawmakers, our House of Representatives has let us down. Things I've heard include "My mail is running 10 to 1 against" and "The partisan tone at the end of the debate today I think did impact the votes on our side."
Whatever.
Elected leaders: You have been presented an opportunity to mitigate a very serious threat to your constituents' ways of life. It does not matter how we got here at this point -- even though many companies took extremely dumb risks, including Fannie Mae
Senators McCain and Obama: Please stop the canvassing and cold-calling looking for my vote until you rally your parties to support this. By the way, you were both embarrassing in your inability to address this forthrightly in the debate on Friday night.
Nobody is blaming you. There will still be time for finger-pointing; you can have your fun later. Now is not the time for politics, ladies and gentlemen. Now is the time for a modest amount of bipartisan courage to help our economy stabilize. If you don't believe we have a very serious risk of a crisis, then stand up and say so; don't hide behind your "mail" and "partisan tone." Otherwise, do the right thing and support this bill, or come up with a better one. Sheesh.
Get this done.