The pro-bailout crowd have three main themes to their statements:
- The Bailout has to happen NOW. Now now now! If it doesn't, many bad things will happen.
- You simpletons aren't smart enough to understand our big juju complicated economic magics! Just shut up and open your wallet already.
- Trust us.
At first, they were telling us how bad the market was going to do if we didn't bail out, but that didn't scare people into submission. So they started hammering the "Wall Street/Main Street" talking point. That still didn't scare people into submission, so they started talking about how no one's credit cards were going to work and everyone was going to get fired and all the small businesses in the country were going to simultaneously go out of business. They also realized that the "bailout" language wasn't working, so they simultaneously respun it as a "rescue" while telling us to "keep politics out of it and, oh yeah, PASS IT NOW."
And they still didn't scare the people into submission.
Now, here's the point: If you support the bailout, put up or shut up. You can't scare us into submission. Wolf has been cried one too many times in this country, and we have fear fatigue. You can't just wave your hands, blow some smoke, and hope we'll be so impressed that we'll turn around and support you. It simply is not going to work, and the more you come in with your condescending fear mongering, the less we're going to trust you.
So, here's how you're going to win us over:
- Don't bother telling us how much time you wasted in college studying economics. No one cares, and it doesn't help your credibility. If you want credibility, we'll judge you on the merits of your ideas, not on how much time you spent in a classroom.
- Don't threaten us.
- Don't try the "you're not smart enough to understand it" line. Thats a good way to convince people that you don't really have a solution, you just want the money, OR you're just another koolaide drinker who wants to be liked by the ones who want the money.
- Use facts and detail. Tell us what the problem is. Not because we don't know what the problem is, but because we want to know that YOU know what the problem is.
- Once you've laid that foundation, explain exactly what you want from the Government. Insert figures, spreadsheets, pie charts, a powerpoint presentation, a youtube video, or whatever you need.
- Explain exactly how what you've just requested from the Government is going to be used, and how using those resources in that way is going to solve the problem. Using the Russian Business Plan* at this point is a sure way to cut yourself off at the knees.
- Explain how this solution to the problem is better than other solutions to the problem. Compare and contrast to the bailout bill that failed today if your plan is different, else compare and contrast to a different plan if you support today's failed bailout.
If you can do all of that WITHOUT fear mongering, WITHOUT condescension, WITHOUT leaving steps out, THEN we can sit down and talk. Until then, the people like me are NOT going to support ANY plan.
Take a look around. There are some good alternatives out there. CNBC, as I write this, is talking about the Chile and Swedish plans. I don't know anything about these plans, but they're talking about it now, which they weren't before. And THAT is what we need. No more "do SOMETHING, ANYTHING, NOW NOW NOW!" Time to be grownups, keep our cool, and work things out.
"Stay calm, because things are never smooth in Congress. There are going to be some bumps and trials and tribulations and ups and downs before we get this rescue package done. I'm confident that we are going to get there, but it's going to be a little rocky."
-Barack Obama
*The Russian Business plan:
- (arbitrary action)
- ...
- Profit!
UPDATE 1:
The comments to this diary are a nice cross section of the discussion so far. Most of the pro bailout crowd completely ignored everything I wrote and spent their words either insulting me directly, rehashing the talking points from the pro-bailout people, or just generally trolling. So far, I've had one link that was actually informative and useful, so I'm sticking it at the top here: Brad DeLong's Blog has some very interesting things to say, though I still have my doubts. Thanks to DelRPCV for that.