John McCain last night decided he wanted to call a timeout on the election. Apparently this is because the he could not afford to watch our country simultaneously participate in a nearly three centuries old democratic process while its remarkably stable - if not terribly efficient - national legislature worked out the details of emergency legislation. No, he must suspend his campaign and come to the rescue on this legislation, the content of which he several months ago declared he "knows much less about" than other major national issues.
What's really going on here?
There are a lot of opinions out there, but it really seems to boil down to two things: politics (his) and politics (his party's). His polls were lagging and he needed to do something characteristically crazy to distract from that fact (see also: canceling day one of the convention, picking Palin). Andrew thinks he's a drama queen, which is maybe why he's so fond of Hail Marys. Palin also had a devastating interview with Katie Couric last night, the remainder of which should air tonight ... if McCain calculated this correctly, roughly nobody will notice that interview due to his stunt. Moreover, it's probably to his benefit to push back the foreign policy debate. That's his strength, but foreign policy doesn't fit the storyline of what's happening right now, so it likely will be quickly forgotten. Also, bonus points if he can actually put off the Veep debate, which, if nothing else, should make for some awesome drinking games (drink if Palin uses circular logic, drink twice when she doesn't even come close to answering the question, drink if Biden condescends).
In terms of the broader party politics here, everyone seems to be in a bind of some sort. The Democrats are in control, and they know action is necessary, but they also don't want to be on the hook for a huge government bailout if there isn't relatively broad bipartisan support; otherwise, this is a great commercial for every Republican candidate to run for the next five weeks (i.e. "The Democrats want to bail out Wall Street, while Main Street suffers"). The Republicans don't really know what the hell to do. They can't really "stand up" to anyone, since they are weak in both legislative bodies, and Bush is increasingly irrelevant. McCain is the wildcard here ... he could swoop in and build consensus with his party, and take credit as the hero. Or, he could swoop in, vote against the bailout, give the finger to his party, and nurse his maverick image.
What this all seems to boil down to is that the only person who benefits by dragging this thing out and politicizing it is John McCain. Everyone else - including Senate and House Republicans who still don't really trust McCain - really should want to agree to a tentative deal before the 4PM meeting at the White House. Palin made the idiotic comment in her interview last night that the country is looking to John McCain for leadership. Sorry, friend, they're not staring at him because he's a leader ... they're staring at him because he's the crazy uncle in the corner whose next move everyone is afraid of.
-Education Dude
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1 comment:
If there is one thing that I truly enjoy about Two Fairly Liberal Dudes is that it embodies what's so great about the United States of America, allowing the people of this country to express their opinions openly and freely without persecution.
John McCain's so called, "Timeout", was more a forced timeout, a 2-minute warning, that gave both sides of the aisle a moment to step back from their presidential campaigns, to focus on their other responsibilies as members of the United States Senate. This so called 'timeout' to focus on legislation for a $700B bailout plan of this country's financial system, in my opinion, was more important than 24-48 hours of constant bickering about what one presidential candidate said about the other.
Barrack Obama and John McCain haven't been elected yet, and until November 4th they are still United States Senators...I just think its funny that the media has to portray this as a political stunt when in reality, John McCain was just doing his job.
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