Anniversary of a meltdown

Sep 15, 2009
by Dennis Coday

Over on the GQ web site is an essay by former Pres. George W. Bush speech writer Matt Latimer about the final months of the Bush administration: Me Talk Presidential One Day.

In the first months I worked at the White House, I wrote any number of speeches praising America’s economic prosperity. ... Yet there were obvious signs that all was not well. The housing bubble had started to collapse, leading to a sharp increase in home foreclosures. ...

Bear Stearns. Lehman Brothers. None of the senior officials at the White House had expected to end the second Bush term this way, with what Warren Buffett called an "economic Pearl Harbor." In fact, Ed Gillespie was mapping out an ambitious schedule of "legacy speeches" for the fall and winter to trumpet all of the administration's achievements. We could strike "remarks on the robust economy" off the list. Pundits on TV started asking why the president wasn’t saying more and what he was going to do. The answers were: We had nothing to say and no one had any idea.

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