Which McCain do you believe?

[janradder]

Today, in Cedar Rapids, IA:

Two years ago I warned this Administration and Congress that regulations for our home loan agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, needed to be fixed.

 

December 2007, as interviewed by the Keene (NH) Sentinel, discussing the sub-prime mortgage crisis:

Q: “Well the dimension of this problem may be surprising to a lot of people, but to many people, to many others there were feelings that there was something amiss, something was going too fast, something was a little too hot.  Going back several years.  Were you one of them? Or, I mean you’re a busy guy, you’re looking at a lot of things, maybe subprime mortgages wasn’t something you focused on every day.  Were you surprised? 

McCain:  “Yeah. And I was surprised at the dot-com collapse and I was surprised at other times in our history.  I don’t know if surprised is the word, but...

And moments later, in the same interview, on the same topic:

 

"But I do rely on a lot of smart people that I have that are both in my employ and acquaintances of mine.  And most of them did not anticipate this.  Most of them, I mean I can find some that did.  But, a guy that’s on my staff named Doug Holtz-Eakin, who was once the head of the Office of Management and Budget, said that there was nervousness out there.  There’s nervousness.  There was nervousness that we had such a long period of prosperity without a downturn because of the history of our economy.  But I don’t know of hardly anybody, with the exception of a handful, that said ‘wait a minute, this thing is getting completely out of hand and is overheating.'

"So, I’d like to tell you that I did anticipate it, but I have to give you straight talk, I did not.”

 

Here's video of the interview and the article I saw this in.

Also, Gail Collins of the NY Times has a great column about McCain suddenly becoming a populist.  Here's one of the better lines:

Really, if McCain is going to keep changing into new people, the campaign should send out notices. (Come to a rally for the next president of the United States. Today he’s a vegetarian!)