Peter DeFazio for President! (I'm serious.)

Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio is the first prominent Democrat to call for the firing of Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, the two Obama administration officials who gave Wall Streeters all the KY Jelly they needed to rape the taxpayers. DeFazio's candor impresses me. In fact, I'm so impressed that I want to run the words "DeFazio for President in 2012" past my audience.

Yeah, I know how most Americans will react to this suggestion: "Peter who?"

Perhaps the better question is: "Who else?"

Well, there's Obama. Believe it or not, I'd love for him to get his act together. I'd love to vote for a newer, smarter, better Obama in 2012. In all likelihood, though, his poll numbers will soon head into George-Bush-2007 territory. (And here's why.) That popularity plunge will, sadly, tar anyone connected to his administration -- including Hillary Clinton (who would make a fine president) and Joe Biden (whom I still like even though you probably don't).

2012 may resemble 1968, when Lyndon Johnson dropped out of the race due to his unpopularity. If RFK had picked up the nomination, Nixon would have lost. Instead, the candidate was Hubert Humphrey, a good man saddled with the unhappy job of being LBJ's veep. Many Dems thought that a vote for Humphrey was a vote for a continuance of the Johnson administration (and of the war).

We know what happened back then. That's why we need an outsider in 2012.

But we also need an insider -- someone who has spent many years in D.C., someone who knows how the system works. Both Dubya and Obama have taught us the dangers of inexperience.

Peter DeFazio is definitely a maverick. He's not part of what the Corrente bloggers call "Versailles." Yet he has been in Congress since 1987 -- and before that, he worked for Representative Jim Weaver. He knows his way around.

He comes from a purple-tinged rural state. I doubt that many country folk in the red states could ever really come to hate him, not in the way they instinctively hate big-city Easterners.

He did four years in the military during Vietnam. He has an unambiguous record of opposing gun control. He wants a big increase in pay for active-duty military personnel. He is a church-goer but not a religious nut.

All of this serves to preempt the more obvious lines of right-wing attack.

If Obama fails as badly as I think he'll fail, if populist outrage over the Wall Street handouts continues to gather force, then the Democrats in 2012 will be desperate to find someone in the party who opposed the Obama economic team from the very beginning. Alas, nearly all of the Democratic opposition came from Blue Dogs whose conservatism would alienate the progressive base and the netroots.

There is but one exception: Peter DeFazio. Let's look at the record:

He opposed the Iraq war from the start. He didn't just give one (1) speech against the invasion, as Obama did. He voted against it.

He offers genuine opposition to free trade agreements.

He opposed the stimulus bill because "I couldn't justify borrowing money for tax cuts." (Most Americans don't know that much of the stim bill went to tax cuts, not job creation.) This principled opposition sent Obama into Al Capone mode. He warned DeFazio: "Don't think we're not keeping score, brother."

That bit of Chicago-style thuggery could prove golden for DeFazio in 2012.

Here's DeFazio on TARP back in January:

I was wrong. It was actually worse than I thought it could be.

The reference goes to the first bailout vote, during the waning days of Bush. (Isn't it odd how many people now forget that this vote even occurred? And it was only a year ago!) DeFazio voted against the October, 2008 TARP plan "emphatically," offering a much more sensible alternative. He was not taken in by the NOW NOW NOW propaganda which was so prevalent at the time.

You know, what did we get for $350 billion? I mean, that's the question my constituents are asking. And that's now the question my colleagues -- even those who supported it -- are asking.

RYSSDAL: How are you going to vote this time when the second $350 billion comes up?

DeFazio: Well, first, today, I want to see these very strong restrictions put in place. But I'm still not inclined to vote for it. I wanted two amendments that aren't being allowed. I would have split the money and said, "OK, here's part of it. Let's see what you do with it." And then, secondly, I still want to impose a minuscule transfer tax, something we had in this country throughout the Great Depression, throughout World War II, up until the '60s, on stock transfers. It wouldn't hurt people in 401(k)'s. And legitimate traders it would be one-quarter of 1 percent, so Wall Street could pay to bailout itself.

That transfer tax -- a tax on stock trades -- is something I have advocated in a number of previous posts. Such a tax would have held in check the insane computerized trading we've seen recently, trading which enriched Goldman Sachs unfairly and led to an utterly distorted market. This proposal would have saved the taxpayers a lot of money.

His opposition to TARP makes him one of the few Democrats that right-wingers will listen to -- hell, even Alex Jones has had him on his show. Yet DeFazio's opposition to "corporate socialism" -- to Goldman Sachs and environs -- will endear him to all true liberals.

DeFazio would not be a perfect candidate. On the issues, he has made one major mistake: He voted for the House health care reform bill, which, if passed by the Senate, will soon be very unpopular.

He's not young. He's not colorful. His rhetoric does not soar. He looks and sounds like a guy who should be running a neighborhood grocery store.

But he has one thing in his favor -- a penchant for being right.

Some of my feminist readers will automatically disqualify him from consideration on the grounds that he has committed the sin of penis-ownership. I hope that his record will make his genitalia forgivable.

No-other left-wing Democrat -- not even Kucinich -- has so consistently and loudly opposed Obama's economic mismanagement. In 2012, many disillusioned progressives who had once backed Obama will thank all of heaven's angels that Peter DeFazio has compiled such a principled resume.