Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked.
The rush to claim he had engineered a victory now looks like a strategic blunder that will prolong the McCain’s campaign’s difficulty in finding a winning message on the economy.
Shortly before the vote, McCain had bragged about his involvement and mocked Sen. Barack Obama for staying on the sidelines.
“I’ve never been afraid of stepping in to solve problems for the American people, and I’m not going to stop now,” McCain told a rally in Columbus, Ohio. “Sen. Obama took a very different approach to the crisis our country faced. At first he didn’t want to get involved. Then he was monitoring the situation.”
McCain, grinning, flashed a sarcastic thumbs up.
“That’s not leadership. That’s watching from the sidelines,” he added to cheers and applause.
Leadership is taking credit for the non-achievements of others who actually worked hard at a problem and had a shot at solving it until Johnny McBigmouth flashed back into town and injected politics into bipartisan negotiations.
McCain is such a fucking Maverick he claims credit not only for things he had little or nothing to do with, but also for things that never happened.
More on McMaverick’s awesome leadershippery: Not a single member of Arizona’s House Congressional delegation voted in favor of the bailout bill McCain claimed to champion.
More Awesome McCain Leadershippery! After taking credit for engineering the compromise that failed primarily because House Republicans — and every member of McCain’s own delegation — voted against the bailout bill, McCain shows leadership by having his campaign blame the other guy!
Nothing says “leadership like “The Buck Stops Over There!”
In his first public appearance since Friday night’s debate, McCain said Democrat Barack Obama advocates tax-and-spend policies that “will deepen our recession,” and voted against funding for equipment needed by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Just 12 days ago, McCain maintained that the fundamentals of our economy were sound, and denied that we were anywhere near a recession. If he had clue one about economics, or was even capable of truthfully recounting Obama’s proposals, he might have a little more credibility.
In the early days of the economic crisis, McCain seemed uncertain how to react. His first response was to say the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Then he backtracked, saying the workers form the foundation of the economy and they are strong. Then he called for a blue-ribbon commission to study the root causes of the debacle on Wall Street. Then he called for the ouster of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, with each shift drawing ridicule from Obama.
But now he’s back to basics: lying about Obama’s tax proposal and claiming Obama’s economic proposals, which he doesn’t understand, will make the recession, which he not only doesn’t understand, but which up until recently he didn’t believe existed, worse.
But we can trust him because, you know, he’s so maverick-y. Or so he keeps on telling us.
Ben Smith at Politico, quoting Howard Kurtz, “the worst may be yet to come for Palin; sources say CBS has two more responses on tape that will likely prove embarrassing.”
There’s been a certain amount of pop sociology in America … that Sarah Palin’s inability to frame a single coherent thought and McCain’s total disconnection from economic reality coupled with wildly erratic statements and actions regarding the economy have hurt his campaign. There’s almost no evidence of that at all. McCain’s mastery of economics and Palin’s intelligent eloquence have always been the strengths of his campaign.
Thirty-nine percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate tonight thought Barack Obama was the winner. Twenty-four percent thought John McCain won. Thirty-seven percent saw it as a draw.
Forty-six percent of uncommitted voters said their opinion of Obama got better tonight. Thirty-two percent said their opinion of McCain got better.
Sixty-six percent of uncommitted voters think Obama would make the right decisions about the economy. Forty-two percent think McCain would.
Forty-eight percent of these voters think Obama would make the right decisions about Iraq. Fifty-six percent think McCain would.
And FiveThirtyEight reports this snippet from the internals of the CBS Poll:
EDIT: The CBS poll of undecideds has more confirmatory detail. Obama went from a +18 on “understanding your needs and problems” before the debate to a +56 (!) afterward. And he went from a -9 on “prepared to be president” to a +21.
In reaction to an email about the Corner’s ignoring Palin’s de-cleating by media lightweight Katie Couric, K-Lo shares her most secret, innermost fantasy:
“Actually, I’m just sitting here wishing Sarah Palin could have married Mitt Romney — then these Christianists could rule a Brave New Theocracy together and I wouldn’t have to pay attention to another politician again.”
If you just vomited all over your computer, sorry.
It goes without saying, but anyone who pines to be the vassal of a Theocracy sired by Mittens and Hockey Mom ought to be institutionalized immediately.
BREAKING K-LO BATSHIT CRAZINESS: Brad asks, Is K-Lo wasted right now? after she writes this following the debate:
I think Obama supporters are happy enough tonight. But I suspect they wanted McCain to show up tired and cranky and he didn’t he appeared a leader whose dont some of that leading. I have my quibbles with some of what McCain said and didn’t said. . .
I think that given given K-Lo’s lack of physical conditioning and the fact that she says this kind of crazy shit all the time, Occam’s razor favors disturbed, rather than wasted. Just because if she were that wasted all the time, she’d be dead by now.
McCain Camp insiders say Palin “clueless”
Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people
are more than concerned about Palin. The campaign has held
a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as “disastrous.” One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, “What are we going to do?” The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is “clueless.”
We know The FastTalkExpress already tried to preempt Palin-Biden by postponing tonight’s debate. . . and we’ve all seen Palin get decapitated by Katie Couric, of all people. And we also know Palin has yet to hold a press conference, and in her limited availability to the media has either gone with a partisan hack like Hannity, or fairly mild lightweight interviewers like Gibson or Couric.
Every action of the McCain Campaign with respect to Palin absolutely reeks of fear and avoidance. She’s fine delivering stupid hockey mom homilies to true believers, but anything approaching a serious question and she’s out of her league. Big fish in a small pond translates into a little fish in a big ocean. And we all know what happens to the little fish.
MORE: On HuffPo, Sam Stein quotes GOP Consultant Craig Shirley:
“It just proves his campaign is governed by tactics and not ideology,” said Republican consultant Craig Shirley, who advised McCain earlier in this cycle. “In the end, he blinked and Obama did not. The ’steady hand in a storm’ argument looks now to more favor Obama, not McCain.”
This is funny: NotAssmissile from Power Tools opines:
Did McCain “blink?”
That’s how Obama supporters and some of Obama’s MSM cheerleaders are spinning John McCain’s decision to participate in tonight’s debate. It’s possible, I suppose, that undecided voters might view it that way.
On the other hand, I suspect that McCain has acted precisely the way most of these voters would want a prospective president to act.
Yeah, I’m sure most voters wanted McCain to pledge to stay in Washington eschew the debate until a bipartisan deal is reached, and then back out of his promise a dozen or so hours after he arrives in Washington and accomplishes nothing, because Obama calls his bluff and says “no deal” to postponing the debate to preempt Palin’s scheduled debacle.
After all, nothing says “presidential” like making a poorly conceived but unequivocal commitment to do something, and then backing out of it, looking like an ass.
Maybe what McCain meant when he claimed that he was going to “suspend his campaign” was “I’m going to suspend the Time-Space continuum” thereby permitting himself to view the results of the debate in advance. Pretty heady stuff for Mr. World Saver.
This Johnny McStraighttalk is a volatile guy. Yesterday, he wasn’t going to the debate, but pledged to stay in Washington until bipartisan legislation addressing financial failures was passed. No deal was reached, and McCain proved at best useless in reaching a consensus between the parties, and at worst injecting his political ambition into the negotiations contributed to a total breakdown after a deal had reportedly nearly been reached.
Now, he’s not only going to Mississippi without accomplishing a fucking thing in Washington and without “suspending” his campaign (despite his vows to the contrary), he’s also declaring victory in advance, like some kind of Conjurer or Crystal Ball Gazer.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that McCain will proclaim himself the winner tonight, no matter how indifferently he performs. More, he’ll run an ad that looks exactly like the one above! Then maybe he’ll “suspend” his campaign again, and go on 4 or 5 talk shows and talk about what a piker Obama is.
“Actually, I’m just sitting here wishing Sarah Palin could have married Mitt Romney — then these Christianists could rule a Brave New Theocracy together and I wouldn’t have to pay attention to another politician again.”
