Scott Brown Massachusetts Victory Sends Wrong Signal To WH

The results of the MA special election are in and it seems that everyone has an opinion as to why Scott Brown beat Martha Coakley for the Senate seat Ted Kennedy held for decades. Let's agree that there were lots of contributing factors that allowed Brown to prevail, though my favorite is the sports angle: it's not just that the MA voters were angry about the economy, health care, Martha's lackadaisical approach--nope, these people are still incensed that neither the Red Sox nor the Patriots could make it happen this year.


I'm not going to comment on health care--that's obviously going to be a roller coaster from this moment forward. But I'm disturbed by this passage from today's New York Times:

Mr. Obama has signaled that he intends to take a more populist stance on financial regulation legislation in Congress, seeking to position Democrats as defenders of the people against Wall Street, and to cast Republicans as defenders of bonus-laden bankers.

So let me get this straight: the reaction to a stunning defeat is to find someone, anyone, who the voters hate and pile on? The notion of a "war on Wall Street" is absurd because it doesn't address the real issue: regulatory reform is dying a slow death. No amount of fat cat rhetoric or band-aid bank tax schemes can escape that truth.

Although my political friends on both sides of the aisle told me that the White House had to tackle health care immediately ("they might not ever get this opportunity again!"), I kept worrying that the window of opportunity to reform the US financial system would only be open for a short time. I also thought that the economy (not the stock market) would need lots of attention in 2009.

The take-away from the MA election should be that the economy and jobs trumps health care. Instead of playing into populist rage, President Obama should refocus his agenda and ensure that the previous system that allowed the US economy go to the brink of collapse is rewired and regulated appropriately.

Image by Flickr User BryanWright5, CC 2.0