In between snide pot-shots at Bush, J.M. Marshall makes some good points about who the real winner with all the accounting scandals that are going on: Al Gore. The general conventional wisdom is that it helps the Democrats generically, but there really is a good case to be made that this specifically helps Gore in ways it won't help the others:

Gore ran on a people versus the powerful, anti-corporate-wrong-doing message. That sounds pretty good right now. And it would give Gore a strong 'I told you so' theme to go along with attacks on the various other ways.

Kerry, Biden, Lieberman and company are johnny-come-lately's on the issue. Gore was out in front on this one. Cynically, but present. If these scandals are still rolling out in 2004 and if the economy is in the crapper, people will be looking for answers and Gore may well look like the person that has them. Marshall uses this as an opportunity to jump on Bush's competence, but that's not really where he's vulnerable. In fact, Bush's competence has never looked better due to his handling of the war. Bush's vulnerability is his background in business and that he is surrounded largely by businessmen. A case could be made that Bush is incapable of changing the corporate environment because he comes from it. Being a career politician may never have looked better.

Of course, it's a long way off and I hope and believe that this will largely be behind us by then. Unfortunately, if the economy isn't headed to recovery by then then not only will Bush be in trouble, he'll deserve to be. Not because of any nonsense that he started this or that this wouldn't be happening if we elected Gore, but rather because he failed to get the market to rally behind him. My biggest fear right now is that there will be a rally to do "something, anything" to make this all better. There are obviously changes that need to be made but I fear we won't get a rational discussion about it as long as things are looking as they are. In the end, though, if Bush does the right thing and doesn't overreact and things aren't any better, the people will blame that tame reaction. From a political standpoint Bush will deserve to lose and the nation will deserve the reactionary populist damage Gore will inflict.

I still believe that we've seen the worst of it. The stock market fall yesterday was smaller than the day before and primarily due to serious drops in two companies that are knee deep in investigations. Unfortunately, the predicted recovery is looking far less assured then before, so I really don't know.