Unpredictable

Now into its chaotic home stretch, the American presidential campaign truly resembles no other. More than ever, the key word is “unpredictable,” because all the traditional reference points are imploding at the lightning speed of the financial crisis.

By rebelling against the White House, the American Congress shined a harsh light on the tattered credibility of President Bush, especially in his own camp. But the authority of candidates McCain and Obama over their respective troops is neither convincing nor reassuring. Spooked legislators fear a punitive vote by their constituents. The upcoming November election will surely be influenced by the crisis. For now, however, Obama’s advantage is that he can brandish his support for the bailout while still demanding—without demagoguery—a “return on investment” for the American people. As for John McCain, he is caught in a web of contradictions, between his ultra-free market credo, the “ideological” turnaround of President Bush and the risk of alienating entire sections of his Republican electoral base.

These paradoxes reveal politicians’ inability to anticipate crises. Electoral platforms, with their torrent of promises, are always conceived for stable times.

In a storm, platforms blow away. Candidates remain, with their capacity to react, to provide credible responses to the emergency. Neither Obama nor McCain seems an expert at this little game—whether in New York or in Washington. Without question, the savior of the system will not arrive on November 4, 2008.

But more generally, the question now is whether this major crisis of confidence will have any pedagogical value. Between “throw capitalism in the trash,” thrown out yesterday in Paris by the dashing revolutionary Besancenot, and sanctimonious belief in the self-regulation of the system, can a path or a voice of reason be found?