Prompted by something I saw on the news last night,  I started going back over some old newspaper articles to see who said what when about the state of Fannie and Freddie.
Seems as though the repugnants -- at least some of them -- were pushing for regulatory reform of the two of them starting around 2005.  And at least some democrats were resisting. 
Below is just a sampling of the record.  It looks in hindsight like the Dems were on what can be spun as the wrong side of this issue and the Repugnants were more nearly on what looks perhaps like the right side. 
For example, here's a quotation from a 2005 NYT describing an exchange between Schumer and Greenspan. 

Mr. Greenspan's heavy regulatory bent on Wednesday was in marked contrast to his overall deregulatory approach in other areas, like hedge funds. That distinction was noted by several senators who questioned the need to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to reduce their portfolios.

In several pointed lines of questioning, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, criticized Mr. Greenspan's recommendation and called it both inconsistent with his other views on regulation and potentially damaging to the housing markets.

Without identifying anyone in particular, Mr. Schumer also suggested that some people who have advanced tougher regulation of the two housing finance companies were really pushing a broader agenda to eliminate the companies and their mission of providing affordable housing.

''I see an analogy to Social Security,'' Mr. Schumer said. ''Social Security has a problem and there are ideologues who want to undo it. Fannie and Freddie have problems, and there are ideologues who want to undo them. But there are ways to fix the problems short of what's been proposed. When the sink is broken, you don't want to tear down the house."

What seems to have been going on is  Democrats suspected that the Republicans really wanted to eliminate Fannie and Freddie under the guise of regulating it.     And so they stopped legislation in the banking committee  that actually LOOKS in retrospect like it might have stopped some of the abuses that lead to the bail-out 
Barney Franks is on record in, I think, 2003 saying how sound they two lenders were then and resisting the Bush administration's call for greater oversight and new regulations.  Here is  Frank's 2003 opening statement to a hearing on regulatory reform of Fannie and Freddie:

I want to begin by saying that I am glad to consider the legislation, but I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two government sponsored enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. We have recently had an accounting problem with Freddie Mac that has led to people being dismissed, as appears to be appropriate. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury.

I must say we have an interesting example of self-fulfilling prophecy. Some of the critics of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say that the problem is that the Federal Government is obligated to bail out people who might lose money in connection with them. I do not believe that we have any such obligation. And as I said, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy by some people.

So let me make it clear, I am a strong supporter of the role that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play in housing, but nobody who invests in them should come looking to me for a nickel--nor anybody else in the Federal Government. And if investors take some comfort and want to lend them a little money and less interest rates, because they like this set of affiliations, good, because housing will benefit. But there is no guarantee, there is no explicit guarantee, there is no implicit guarantee, there is no wink-and-nod guarantee. Invest, and you are on your own.

Now, we have got a system that I think has worked very well to help housing. The high cost of housing is one of the great social bombs of this country. I would rank it second to the inadequacy of our health delivery system as a problem that afflicts many, many Americans. We have gotten recent reports about the difficulty here.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have played a very useful role in helping make housing more affordable, both in general through leveraging the mortgage market, and in particular, they have a mission that this Congress has given them in return for some of the arrangements which are of some benefit to them to focus on affordable housing, and that is what I am concerned about here. I believe that we, as the Federal Government, have probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing and to set reasonable goals. I worry frankly that there is a tension here.

The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disastrous scenarios. And even if there were a problem, the Federal Government doesn't bail them out. But the more pressure there is there, then the less I think we see in terms of affordable housing.

As this history plays out more -- as I suspect it will in the coming debates --  I can't see how this all can be a net plus for the democrats or Obama.  Here is the text of a speech that McCain gave on the floor urging greater regulation of Fannie and Freddie and sounding positively prescient. 

Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae's regulator reported that the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae's former chief executive officer, OFHEO's report shows that over half of Mr. Raines' compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.

The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator's examination of the company's accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.

For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs--and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO's report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO's report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.