Civil Sense, he of the Colorado Index, doesn't like my dissing of CNBC business anchor Larry Kudlow, who's reportedly thinking of challenging Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Countrywide) in 2010.
First, while Kudlow may have used cocaine in the past, that is not an automatic disqualification for public office. Even President Obama admitted to using "a little blow" before.Second, while Kudlow did not see the sky falling one year prior to the financial crisis, very few did. That said, he is not corrupt, unlike Sen. Dodd, so that would be an immediate improvement.
Third, because he is a broadcaster, he can communicate. After all, President Reagan was a baseball broadcaster early in his career. The Republicans have too many politicians who are philosophically correct yet cannot connect with the public e.g. Bobby Jindal. A trained broadcaster with a firm grasp of market economics may work wonders in educating the public and the fiscally illiterate members of the Senate.
I never said that prior cocaine use was a disqualifier. In fact, I pretty much went out of my way to avoid saying that. But these things are always held more against Republicans than Democrats, and you can be sure that it'll be used to color Kudlow out of the box.
Civ Sense nails Kudlow's biggest advantages: 1) he's not corrupt like Dodd, and 2) he can communicate business and economics on TV. How well that style translates to campaign speeches is as yet unknown. Giving interviews is very different from conducting them. And please, can we declare a moratorium on Reagan comparisons? Calling Reagan a sportscaster is like calling Eisenhower a football player. By the time he ran for governor of California, he was a little more than that.
(Sense's cutting Jindal is a little bizarre; given that he's actually been elected Governor of Louisiana, he clearly connected with over half the voters there; it's not as though the irresistible Louisiana Republican Machine put him in office.)
As for the tsunami, in fact, the Street was worried about this as far back as '06. I clearly remember sitting in meetings at the brokerage with our senior analyst and head trader remarking on the fragility of the mortgage credit market, and that these derivative had spread the risk around to the point where nobody knew who held what. Search Kudlow's columns for any unease in 2006 on that score.
Kudlow's in the position of a bridge player who's got almost all the high cards in one suit, and nothing in anything else. If the debate moves to something other than finance, he's screwed. If he can be shown not to be 200 times brighter than Dodd in that one suit, he's equally screwed. As late as December 2007, Kudlow was claiming that a few interest rate tweaks here and there, along with moving poor mortgage-holders into FHA loans, would be enough to right the ship with little pain. Not a great move for someone who's selling his deep understanding of money and markets.
Dodd may well be damaged enough goods that he can be taken in a Democrat state. I'm just not enthusiastic about Larry Kudlow as the man to do it.
