McCain Linking Obama to the Current Financial Crisis

In two new ads, and in a recent speech, McCain is trying to link the current financial badness to Obama. In the first ad, called Advice, we hear that one of Obama’s economic advisors is Franklin Raines, former CEO of Fannie Mae. The rest of the ad is essentially irrelevant, since all it’s trying to do is show you that Obama is being advised by someone who is connected deeply with the current economic collapse.

The same thing happens in the second ad. We hear about another former Fannie Mae CEO being associated with Obama. Trouble trouble. Guilt by association. This kind of thing works, no matter how logically silly it many be.

Now, the speech I’m talking about was on the radio a few days ago. I’m not sure where it took place or what it was about, but I do know that at one point, McCain said that Obama’s advisors had told him that Obama would benefit politically from the current financial problems.

In latin this has a name: Cui Bono. It means basically, when something bad happens, see who benefits from it, and blame him. It makes some sense, but not in this situation. There is no way that Obama is responsible for the financial crisis. So why would McCain even say it? Because it works. No matter how blatantly illogical it is, people don’t like when someone benefits from a bad thing, even if they had nothing to do with it. It just “makes that person look bad”. It’s another example of the human brain screwing up our logic.