Likewise, there were many people who saw the 2008 pop coming and bet on it, but just mistimed it by a few months. The handful of Wall Street guys who timed it just right made their careers and look like geniuses, but there were numerous times that many people who took massive hits because they were just a few months too early.
The point is, the doomsday message is never going to appeal to incumbents, because it's pretty hard to know where you are in the bubble. If you're only in the middle and you start jacking interest rates up (prolonging the bubble but not popping it), its very likely that it will look like you made the wrong move (after all, prices kept going up the whole time, regardless of the rate increases, so maybe it wasn't a bubble?) Greenspan was a genius ... until 2.5 years after he stepped down. Now he gets a large part of the blame for causing the bubble.
We're in another real estate bubble right now. Guaranteed. My so-cal house is up over 20% just in the last year (after only falling about 20% from its 2008 peak), and things are only accelerating in my area. But real estate is basically the only thing driving the economy, so there's no way they're lowering rates in the next two years, so there's no way prices are falling. Asset prices overall are going to skyrocket over the next few years, and then will crash again, probably close to as hard as in 2008. But whether that crash is 3 years out, 5 years out, or 10 years out, I have no idea. Nobody does. So if you're a politician, the safest bet is to ride the wave and just hope you don't get smashed into the rocks.