Part of the frustration conservatives feel with the McCain campaign is over its abject failure to explain in simple terms what responsibility its opponent bears for the current financial mess. It really isn’t that hard. Peter Wallison sums it up in two paragraphs:

In the summer of 2005, a bill emerged from the Senate Banking Committee that considerably tightened regulations on Fannie and Freddie, including controls over their capital and their ability to hold portfolios of mortgages or mortgage-backed securities. All the Republicans voted for the bill in committee; all the Democrats voted against it. To get the bill to a vote in the Senate, a few Democratic votes were necessary to limit debate. This was a time for the leadership Sen. Obama says he can offer, but neither he nor any other Democrat stepped forward.

Instead, by his own account, Mr. Obama wrote a letter to the Treasury Secretary, allegedly putting himself on record that subprime loans were dangerous and had to be dealt with. This is revealing; if true, it indicates Sen. Obama knew there was a problem with subprime lending — but was unwilling to confront his own party by pressing for legislation to control it. As a demonstration of character and leadership capacity, it bears a strong resemblance to something else in Sen. Obama’s past: voting present.

This isn’t “too complicated” as some have claimed. It is true. And it is, one would think, a politically smart thing to look for your opponent’s weak spot on the most important issue of the day. Instead we have got a mish-mash of “Wall Street greed” and other assorted populist arguments and attacks on Obama, none of which really ever took hold.

It remains a mystery why the argument outlined by Wallison wasn’t driven home forcefully. Granted, it might not have turned the tide. But it would have been a substantive, intellectually honest and even conservative message. It had the benefit of being consistent with other themes — lack of political courage and fidelity to the party machine — which characterize Obama’s political record. Perhaps at the eleventh hour, in the last debate we’ll see some of it. But it would have come in handy a month ago.