Where's the C.E.O. Love?

J. Jennings moss writes from New York: Don't go looking for Wall Street executives to be Facebook friends of either Barack Obama and John McCain. The two rivals for the presidency are in agreement on one point: that any bailout for the financial sector come with limits on executive compensation.

"We can't have taxpayers footing the bill for bloated golden parachutes like we see in the Lehman Brothers" bankruptcy filing, John McCain said Monday during a town hall meeting in Scranton, Pennsyvlania. "My friends, the top executives are asking for $2.5 billion in bonuses after they ran the company into the ground."

McCain, the Republican nominee, wants senior executives who are benefiting from the bailout to have their compensation capped at the amount the highest-paid government official makes. That person presumably would be the president, who makes $400,000 a year, gets a $50,000 expense account, a $100,000 nontaxable travel account, and $19,000 for entertainment.

Somewhat surprisingly, Obama doesn't go after the notion of limiting C.E.O. pay as strongly as does McCain, although by all accounts he agrees on the concept. During a campaign stop Monday in Wisconsin, Obama called for a 10 percent reduction in federal spending on contractors, though this idea really has nothing to do with the bailout plan under discussion.

In an interview broadcast today on NBC, Obama said the focus of the bailout should be on taxpayers. "It can't be simply a bailout for investors, CEOs, shareholders. They've got to take a hit for the bad decisions that they make."

Media accounts of how the two campaigns are responding to the financial crisis and the bailout plan suggest McCain and Obama are largely in agreement with their criticisms of the Bush administration' plan. And that's a problem, because they don't go far enough.

A story today in the Washington Post says that "given the drama on Wall Street, economists of all economic stripes say the candidates' reluctance to adjust to the new landscape, as well as their focus on such peripheral issues as lobbying ties to mortgage giant Fannie Mae, are turning the campaigns into a sideshow."

"The U.S. fiscal situation is dramatically deteriorated from what it was," said Martin N. Baily, a former chairman of President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers told the Post. "There is a debate which we need to have that is becoming more urgent: Our fiscal picture does not add up."

Obama on Tuesday acknowledged the bailout would affect some of the promises he's made during the campaign, primarily with the roll-out of his health care reform proposal.

J. Jennings Moss

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