OFF THE CHARTS
By FLOYD NORRIS
Published: October 17, 2008
THE most important legislation passed by the current Congress almost certainly was the bank bailout bill. Whether it will do much good is still unclear, but there is little doubt that most Americans were not impressed, even though the bill was backed by Congressional leaders, the president and both major presidential candidates.
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Passage of the bill appears to have pushed the approval rating for Congress to a record low, leaving Congress far less popular than President Bush, whose standing with voters is close to historic lows. It may affect several legislative races next month, in which senators and members of Congress who backed the legislation have slipped in polls.
But the bailout seems to be having no impact at all on the presidential race. Both Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama voted for it, and neither man chose to mention it in this week’s final presidential debate.
There is virtually no difference between Obama backers and McCain supporters in terms of supporting the bailout, as is shown in the accompanying chart based on the New York Times/CBS poll taken from Oct. 10 to 13.
Among those who thought the bailout was a good idea, the split in favor of Senator Obama was 55 percent to 37 percent. Among those who opposed the bailout, the split was 53 percent to 37 percent.
That raises the question of what might have happened if one major candidate had risked going against the unified political establishment in Washington and had voted against the bill. Would that move have appealed to the majority of Americans who say they dislike the bailout, or would it have backfired by making that candidate seem irresponsible?
The debate on Wednesday might have been more entertaining — and perhaps more illuminating — if the two most prominent third-party candidates, the independent, Ralph Nader, and Bob Barr, a Libertarian, had been included. They represent the two major strains of opposition: Mr. Nader thinks it is homeowners, not banks, who deserve help, while Mr. Barr sees the bailout as a violation of free enterprise principles.
If the split between the Republicans and Democrats cannot be seen in the overall support for the bailout, it can be seen in expectations of what will happen now.
One question in the poll asked if the beneficiaries would be “mostly just a few big investors and people who work on Wall Street” or whether it would help “homeowners and people throughout the country as well.”
A large majority of those polled — 63 percent — thought the bailout would benefit only Wall Street, and those voters were overwhelmingly for Senator Obama, by a 59 percent to 31 percent margin.
If there were more people who thought the bailout would help everyone, perhaps Mr. McCain would be doing better in the polls. Among the 28 percent of Americans who thought everyone would benefit, the Obama lead is a statistically insignificant one point, 44 to 43.
Among the Senate races that could be affected are two seats held by Republicans, in Minnesota and Georgia. The incumbents, Norm Coleman and Saxby Chambliss, were ahead in the polls before their vote for the bailout, but the latest polls give Mr. Coleman’s opponent, the former comedian Al Franken, a narrow lead. In Georgia, Mr. Chambliss has seen his substantial lead narrow, although he is still ahead of Jim Martin, a former state legislator. Both Democrats have made the votes a central issue in their campaigns.
In the House, Jim Marshall, Democrat of Georgia, and Paul Kanjorski, Democrat of Pennsylvania, are fighting tough races in which their Republican opponents are criticizing them for backing the bailout.
Floyd Norris comments on finance and economics in his blog at norris.blogs.nytimes.com.
