A financial crisis on the scale of the one unfolding on Wall Street would be terrible at any juncture. But the timing of this one is astonishingly bad. In one corner is a president with just over a hundred days left to serve, who many people be-rnlieve is among the most calamitous ever to occupy the White House. In the other corner is Congress, where a third of the Senate and the whole of the House face re-election in exactly one month's time. Flickering in and out of the fray are the two presidential candidates, whose campaigns have become the playthings of forces over which they have no control. If ever there were a recipe for poor political leadership, this is it.rnThe malign coincidence of crash and election reinforces the difficulties. Political weakness makes it hard to get to grips with a reeling economy, and the economic crisis disrupts the process of choosing a new president. Most obviously, it is distracting attention from the contest. At a time when voters ought to be weighing up the candidates' characters, records and policies, the airwaves are saturated with the grim news from the world's banks and bourses. Even worse, the crisis makes a mockery of many of the campaign promises laboriously crafted in focus groups and policy workshops, and methodically laid out on the stump and via the internet.
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