"What Bush Left Out
by Dan Froomkin
Washington Post
September 25, 2008
In a rare prime-time speech last night, President Bush tried to terrify the American public into supporting his administration's proposed $700 billion Wall Street bailout. Given that some sort of compromise proposal was apparently already being worked out with congressional leaders, that might have been overkill.
But Bush clearly underperformed in addressing two things about the financial crisis. He didn't acknowledge any responsibility for what happened under his watch. And even more significantly, he didn't do nearly enough to assuage anger that the fat-cat Wall Street masters who profited so obscenely from driving the mortgage market into a frenzy are now going to be bailed out with taxpayer dollars, even as ordinary people continue to suffer.
