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Joel Achenbach and Ashley Surdin: “A political establishment held in higher regard might have been able to hold together some kind of coalition of the willing…. Members of Congress in both liberal and conservative districts were inundated with e-mails and phone calls from angry voters opposing the bailout. With Election Day a little more than a month away, many lawmakers appeared to pay greater heed to their constituents than to their party leaders.”
If you need the message to be any clearer, Conor Clarke at the Atlantic spells it out for you:
Update: Probably didn’t put this clearly enough–Paulson basically began negotiations like Alec Baldwin’s character from Glengarry Glenross. And I don’t think people expect their treasury secretary to deal with the public like that during a time of crisis, or that we’d have to worry too much about his allegiances. So maybe the country is playing brinkmanship too. It’s, you know, allowed.
