Two dogs made news yesterday: the dud of a bank bailout plan unveiled by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, which caused the Dow to plummet by almost 400 points, and the selection of "Stump," a 10-year old Sussex spaniel, as top dog at the 133rd annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York.
Born Ch. Clussexx Three D.Grinchy Glee, "Stump" is the oldest dog ever to win Westminster — about 70 in human years. So three cheers for an old dog performing new tricks.
Geithner, by contrast, received mainly Bronx cheers for a plan that even Team Obama's fans complained was short on the specifics needed to reassure Wall Street and calm the markets.
"Geithner at the Improv" clucked the conservative Wall Street Journal, a persistent critic of the new president and his team. Even The New York Times was hostile. "One thing to avoid at a time of uncertainty," the liberal paper editorialized on Tuesday, "is raising more questions." Apparently young, or middle-aged dogs — Geithner, like his boss, President Obama, is 47 — will need to learn some new tricks, or practice the old ones harder.
I turned on the Westminster show in desperate need of diversion after a depressing day of watching the markets tumble by 5 percent and bi-partisan grumbling over the financial rescue plan grow. At his press conference Monday night, President Obama described the Geithner bank proposal as one of the three legs of his financial rescue stool. But suddenly, the stool seemed wobbly.
Not so Stump, who plodded his way across the ring at Madison Square Garden with determination, eliciting wild applause with every bounce. The sure-footed 50-pound spaniel who came out of retirement for last night's event was clearly the crowd favorite.
Stump, I learned, was no ordinary show dog. Felled by a mysterious illness after winning the "sporting group" at Westminster in 2004, he spent much of his miraculous recovery sleeping on the bed of his handler and part-owner, Scott Sommer. Unlike most other dogs at New York's favorite pet show — who worked out at the Hotel Penn on doggie treadmills to prep for the event and savored pre-show massages, spas and nail grooming sessions — Stump hadn't trained for Westminster. In fact, his owner said, he had barely walked Stump up and down the driveway of his home in Houston, Texas before deciding last week to enter the veteran pooch in the world's most subjective pet beauty pageant.
But Stump's appeal could not be denied. "He showed his heart out," said Best in Show Judge Sari Tietjen, who said she had no idea when she selected him that Stump was a senior. The boisterous hound was "everything you'd want in the breed," she explained. "I couldn't say no to him."
What the country wants now from Mr. Geithner is a Stump-like performance. Revelations of his tax-chiseling-like ways (such as deducting his child's summer camp from his income taxes) and apparent disdain for tough-minded regulation of the financial sector — raised questions about his fitness for the post in such troubled times. Many quietly favored a more seasoned, widely respected figure, say, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker. But the naysayers complained that Volcker, like Stump, was too old.
There are, in fact, many strengths to Geithner's approach, the most obvious being his decision to rely on the private sector to help price the toxic assets the bail-out package is expected to remove from the books of our Zombie banks, or as Geithner put it, "to mobilize and leverage private capital, not to supplant" it.
But before the private sector buys into the plan, those gaping holes of questions need filling now rather than later. What we don't need is a reprise of the show staged by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who seemed to be improvising as he went along. We know how that performance ended: with a mess on the floor.