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'Nihilist' House GOP Doomed US to Recession

American leadership is 'scarcer than credit,' writes Brooks

By Jason Farago, Newser Staff

Posted Sep 30, 2008 12:00 PM CDT

(Newser) – When FDR became president, writes David Brooks, his first priority was to give Americans faith in their leadership, to show that someone was running the show. Now that the US is facing the greatest financial crisis since the Depression, today's political leaders "have failed utterly and catastrophically to project any sense of authority, to give the world any reason to believe that this country is being governed."

George Bush, Henry Paulson, Barney Frank, and Nancy Pelosi all dropped the ball on the bailout, but the New York Times columnist reserves his greatest ire for the House Republicans who led 228 "nihilists" to vote down the bill. Their self-serving nays didn't just hurt the markets; they "exacerbated the global psychological freefall." The bailout's opponents "will go down in history as the Smoot-Hawleys of the 21st century," he writes, destroying not just the economy, but the Republican party as well.

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People walks past a financial display board in central London, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

The board is pictured at the New Zealand Stock Exchange at Auckland, New Zealand, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008. (AP Photo/New Zealand Herald, Richard Robinson)

Wall St. is shown Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008 in New York. A snapback of some degree wasn't unexpected as carnage on Wall Street often attracts bargain hunters. Still, questions remain about how Wall Street... (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

A man in London Tuesday Sept. 30, 2008. sells newspapers with front page picture and stories regarding Congress' failure on Monday to agree a US$700 billion plan to bailout the financial industry. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

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What’s sad is that they still think it’s 1984. They still think the biggest threat comes from socialism and Walter Mondale liberalism. They seem not to have noticed how global capital flows have transformed our political economy.

Henry Paulson is a smart moneyman, but an inept legislator. He was told time and time again that House Republicans would not support his bill, and his response was to get down on bended knee before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

And let us recognize above all the 228 who voted no — the authors of this revolt of the nihilists. They showed the world how much they detest their own leaders and the collected expertise of the Treasury and Fed.

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'Nihilist' House GOP Doomed US to Recession