Bair might have learned about politics at the feet of her political mentor and former boss, former Republican Presidential candidate and Senator from Kansas, Bob Dole, but she certainly doesn't sound like any hard-hearted partisan hack:

"This myth of all these people making sophisticated calculations and trying to game the system, that wasn't it," Ms. Bair says of the event [on avoiding foreclosure] hosted by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "These were just regular people, working families trying to hold onto their homes. They were scared and I saw a lot of fear on their faces, and I think that struck me more than anything."

Bair, unlike many a mortgage-holder and deregulation apologist, doesn't see an upside to putting more mortgagees on the street and boarding up more homes — a key part of Obama's recovery plan which calls for a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures, if you've been paying attention.

Her willingness to consider what Obama likes to call a "Main Street bailout" focusing on distressed homeowners has gotten her in a little bit of hot water with the Administration that appointed her. While Camden Fine, the president and chief executive of the Independent Community Bankers of America, says of her, "She very likely will be the only agency head to come out of this crisis with an enhanced reputation," and Democratic Congressman and House Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank says, "She's shown you can be concerned about consumers and not skimp on your job as a regulator," she has fewer fans down by the White House. Bair's plan to use the resources of the FDIC to help homeowners has come under fire and is being re-written by White House aides, who are also resisting calls by Frank and Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) to put Bair officially in charge of managing the foreclosure crisis.

At the end of the day, too, she resists placing blame solely on homeowners or individuals that bit off more than they might have been able to chew:

Ms. Bair is optimistic that the U.S. will emerge from the current morass stronger than it was just a few years ago. Institutions and consumers were overleveraged, she says, and the current crisis should usher in a new era of "wise and prudent consumption" and a focus on the "basic notion of thrift."

"Getting back to basics, saving before you buy, thinking through expenditures, and not getting too deep into debt," Ms. Bair says. "We need to get back in touch with those cultural values."

Well, I mean, people were calling Obama un-American before the election. A Treasury Secretary that thinks saving and spending prudently is important is nearly as un-American as it gets (but in a good way).

Sheila Bair Tops The List [Wall Street Journal]
The 50 Women To Watch 2008 [Wall Street Journal]

MOE: Hi.

MEGAN: Hey, at least one of us got to sleep in! Are you back in New York?

MOE: No I am not. I am on the couch of the gracious Rachel Baker of Boston Magazine again. I didn't get to sleep until about 3:30. In any case, I apologize for my tardiness. I will gladly allow you to garnish my wages, oh wait.

MEGAN: I'll be lucky if my wages aren't garnished by the end of the month, what with the election being over and no one caring anymore. Luckily, Sarah Palin is the scandal that keeps on giving. Quick! Name the countries in NAFTA!!

MOE: Quick! Pronounce all the high fashion designers who contributed to her brand new quarter million dollar wardrobe! Has she made plans to sell it on eBay yet?

MEGAN: Oh, hell, she doesn't even know! But the only name I've heard mentioned is Valentino. The rest have been, like, Tahari, Ann Taylor, Cole Haan. Even the Louis Vuitton bag is supposedly fake, which is sort of hilarious to have a candidate for Vice President of the United States carrying around a counterfeit knock-off bag. I mean, we bitch at the Chinese all the time (and I mean, ALL the time) about the prevalence of counterfeit goods in China and then our VP is carrying one. (Notably, NAFTA includes Mexico, Canada and the United States, though I'm sure you, at least, knew.)

MOE: I love how it was McCain's foreign policy adviser that gets fired for siding… with Palin. So…Cheneyesque, only if the president was the old dude a few dozen open heart surgeries away from holding onto the presidency, and his running mate was this young, spry, Machiavellian…total ignoramus!

MEGAN: Well, it's less that he "sided" with Palin and more that he was the one going around trashing Nicolle Wallace last week to suck up to her and help Palin shape the media narrative that none of this was her fault. Which, you would think the foreign policy adviser would be the most upset about his charge not knowing that Africa was a continent made up of many disparate countries, but everyone knows Randy Scheunemann doesn't care about Africa. They don't have the kind of money Georgia does, so he's not going to make a Presidential campaign dance to their tune.

MOE: Okay, two things: I actually do not believe it is possible she believed Africa was a country. As for Randy Scheunemann, any campaign that has good friends of William Kristol "shaping the media narrative" is a frankly unreliable narrator to say the least. Is it possible to reach the age of forty having never taken a sufficiently long look at a map? I just don't believe it, especially what with all her cosmopolitan travels around the warmer latitudes back in college.

MEGAN: I mean, let's just state the obvious: she was probably drunk then. But, also, this is the woman who reportedly sought to give her own concession speech before McCain's and had to be told that no such thing had happened in the history of Presidential concession-speech giving.

MOE: Well they're a team of mavericks. They're gonna disagree. No such thing as Sarah Palin had ever happened in the history of Presidential concession speech blah blah!

MEGAN: Well, he was a maverick. This is a quote from John Weaver, who's the guy Davis and Schmidt ousted to take over and run the campaign into the ground.

"If you had told me two years ago that John McCain would end his active national political life perceived by many as the candidate of the special interests tied to lobbyists; that many people considered his campaign dishonorable and focused on small things; that he wasn't seen as presidential and the right person to have in a crisis; and that the broad center in American politics had turned against him, I would have laughed in your face," said John Weaver, his longtime friend who resigned from the campaign in a power struggle last year.

"That's not who he is," Weaver said. "But that's the campaign that he chose."

Like, I don't think you'll get a more honest assessment from a guy that actually likes and believe in McCain — to this day — than that. But, really, the money quote is this:

"The Palin pick was a base pick in a non-base election," Weaver said. "In this media world that we live in, you can't take someone who has not had any exposure, who had not had any vetting, public and private, and strap her to a rocket."

Really? We can't? Could we, um, maybe try?

MOE: Well Mark McKinnon pointed out a few weeks back that running a campaign sucks, and that it's the easy thing to blame or whatever. I mean, duh, his campaign was insane and inane, both of which, as Olbermann won't let you forget, rhyme among other things with "membrane," which leads me to observe (how could it not) that such things need tough skins to sail through unscathed, and a thin permeable membrane that makes visible all the discord beneath the surface, which John McCain never had in his broke talk express days, is always a bad sign.

MEGAN: And now I have a mental vision of the McCain campaign as a baby calf, crying inside its cowl after having been deposited, bloody and foul, onto the barn room floor. I watch way too much Animal Planet.

MOE: Yeah I was actually trying to hint at a partial birth abortion reference, albeit counterintuitively considering seventy two is way past the "viable" age for making it outside the womb, as this old guy with a cane in Pennsylvania just reminded us when he took out his rage re: Obama on two poor guys who most likely were not even black. Pennsylvania has really had the best election violence.

MEGAN: Oh, there is plenty of fun verbal hyperbole around, too.

MOE: Ha ha old coot took out his rage on the BLIGHT brothers. Can that possibly be real? Also, Jose Antonio Ortiz totally voted for Obama. Heal the Animal Planet, and the continent of Earth too.

MEGAN: Also, I love that they were in Pizzle's Bar. That is an awesome dive bar name.

MOE: So, where is Jeremiah Wright in all this? On vacation somewhere exotic like Australasia??

MEGAN: Well, if the right wing crazies are to be believed, he's probably holed up with Obama plotting revenge. In reality, I believe he's writing his memoirs and staying out of the press, probably trying to avoid more death threats. So, what do you think of the whole Rahm as Chief of Staff thing? Because I'm sort of with Michelle Cottle on this, in that it seems a strange move for Rahm except for one thing. And that thing is the next gubernatorial race in Illinois.

MOE: So I think this all bodes well for Shep Smith continuing to "go rogue". I haven't watched Fox since Tuesday — when in liberal Massachusetts, etc. — but I relished "it just gets frightening sometimes" so much I can't wait to get home and switch it on! As for Rahm, I don't know him but I would say, there is probably nothing more attractive than the job you have had once and loved but know you could do an immeasurably more effective job at doing now that you're ten years older etc. etc. He seems like he has a big ego, but I chalk a lot of that up to partisan rage built up over twelve years of GOP leadership in the House. It's in the culture.

MEGAN: No, he has an enormous ego. That's not, from me, a criticism, but he is a politician. He doesn't, by any means, have the largest one on the Hill, but he's definitely top 100 and I'd bet he'd admit it. On Shep, let's also not forget his outrage at Ralph Nader yesterday.

MOE: Oh, wow. Cunts are still running Public Citizen I guess. To think I voted for that guy.

MEGAN: I love when Shep gets outraged, I'll admit it. When I was in Denver and St. Paul, I tried to get the Fox people to hook me up with Shep instead of Bill Hemmer, but he wasn't there. Last week, Jon Stewart called Shep's show "Studio Bee-yotch" after the Joe The Motherfucking Plumber thing and I was like, he's my Studio Beyotch, Jon!

MOE: Here's all I want to know from you: Treasury Secretary ... who is?? Creed and I have elaborate Anderson Cooper Shep Smith Katrina fantasy involving Prada life vests, just throwing that out there.

MEGAN: I know, I'm such a fruit fly, these are things I've just accepted about myself. Anyway, on Treasury Secretary, Politico had their speculative short list last week.

Treasury secretary: Former Clinton treasury secretaries Larry Summers and Robert Rubin; FDIC Chairwoman Sheila C. Bair; New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, former Treasury under secretary and assistant secretary; former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker

My money's on Volcker, for obvious reasons.

MOE: Yeah yeah yeah but there's been no narrowing since then? I'm rooting for Bair, if only because I know the S&P 500 will not like it if she's announced, because she is a chick, and wants to keep people in their houses. And the market will be right, there is really nothing to be "confident" about and they might as well not rally, but Bair will be right because keeping as many people in their houses as possible is the most economically sound thing to do, even if it is not glamorous work you can solve with some fancy "model. Whoa, Governator one of two on the short list for energy secretary? Does he take that job? WTF

MEGAN: I think that's someone's idea of a joke. And, no, I don't think Schwarzenegger gets it. The Republicans that get appointments — if any — won't be vociferous McCain supporters.
MOE: Also wtf is a "Press staff morale chief"?

MEGAN: Well, none of those people appear, at least from what I've read, to be on the transition team or the advisory board, which tradition holds don't end up in appointments, so no narrowing yet I think. I can't see Summers getting it.

MOE: Hahaha what you get when you google Tommy Vietor, the shoe-in for press staff morale chief: some 2005 exchange wherein Vietor assures a reporter Obama is also pro-puppy, for the record. Foreshadowing!

MEGAN: Who among us wants them to adopt a mutt from a local Humane Society? None of this fancy-shmancy breed crap, not even if it's a rescue. I want a straight-up shelter dog.

MOE: Whatever, I don't care, as long as they don't give the fucking thing a book contract. Though I would like to know why the Bushes have a dog named "Barney."

MEGAN: "Barney" is kind of a good dog name. I personally question the wisdom of "Mrs. Beasley".