We have a fresh new face on the political scene!  Lazard Middle Market co-CEO Mike McFadden announced yesterday that he is running against freshman incumbent Al Franken to represent Minnesota in the U.S. Senate.

In day one of the post-Bachmann era, the Republicans are finally ready to leave behind Bachmann’s record-setting number of disgraceful Pants-on-Fire ratings from the non-partisan fact-checking organization, PolitiFact.

Surely a guy who does financial asset management for a living will be especially accurate when it comes to fiscal policy.  Indeed, yesterday CEO Mike came out with his HP 12C finance calculator a blazin.’

We have a massive amount of debt. Al Franken has now been in the Senate for four and a half years, and I have not seen any improvement in that.”

Bam!  Look at that smoke trailing away from the old HP 12C.  Take that, Stuart Smalley!

McFadden did make a really awesome point, except that its demonstrably untrue.

Michele Bachmann is dead.  Long live Michele Bachmann!

As this chart shows, part of the Franken era includes a time when “the federal budget deficit is shrinking faster than at any time since the demobilization from World War II.”  Deficit is not the same as debt, but lowering deficits is a good way to reduce debt.

So, the first reason to be wary of Mr. McFadden is that he is already showing Minnesotans a Bachmannesque  relationship with the truth.

The second even more important reason to be wary of Mr. McFadden is that the fiscal austerity policy he wants to double down on is bad for America’s struggling economy.   As Jeb Graham from Investors Business Daily points out,

“Here’s a pretty important fact that virtually everyone in Washington seems oblivious to: The federal deficit has never fallen as fast as it’s falling now without a coincident recession.”

In other words, McFadden introduced himself to Minnesotans by lying, in order to champion a destructive jobs creation policy.  Other than that, it was a pretty successful announcement.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured in Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.