Don't worry America: they're on the caseOver the past week or so, Senator McCain has articulated no policy position on the bailout and Wall Street's profligacy that has not seemed either incoherent ("Fire the SEC chairman!") or too much like me-too bandwagon jumping ("Restrict executive pay!"). He has previously copped to not understanding economics; unlike foreign policy - which seemed poised to dominate this election cycle at the outset - it is not an area where he thrives. One of his chief economic advisers, former Sen. Phil Gramm, once proclaimed Americans "a nation of whiners," unable to appreciate the fact that the economy, regardless of their personal experiences of it, was fundamentally strong. Indeed, McCain, too, has embraced this notion of fundamental soundness - though to his credit he has allowed that "people are hurting." Of course, as we now know, the economy was not fundamentally sound. Indeed, it is so fundamentally unsound that $700 billion in taxpayer subsidy is required to salvage it.
The American electorate has sensed McCain's weakness (and more profoundly, detected his party's complicity in fomenting this crisis); they have decided increasingly to place their faith in Obama. McCain's staff, who know how to read a poll, decided that, well, something had to be done. After all, their man seemed unable to extricate himself from the quicksand merely by explaining what he might do in this situation - in common parlance, this is known as "talking about the issues" (syn. "Straight Talk" ha ha). So another gimmick: Senator McCain, who has no idea what the hell he's talking about, is desperately needed in Washington to work on the bailout. Perhaps his mere presence will imbue the proceedings with a glow of bipartisanship and comity. Who knows. At any rate he'll be in Washington, being above the fray (the fray nowadays consisting mainly of his own outrageously mendacious campaign ads). Being, we are meant to infer, presidential.
Mr. McCain Goes to Washington is, of course, not a suspension of a campaign but a continuation of it by other means. Getting off the trail stops the bleeding, and changes the tone: McCain is a doer, not a talker. He's not willing to put political aspirations above the public good. McCain wants to duck the debate scheduled for 9 p.m. on Friday not because he genuinely believes that he's going to be doing anything worth a damn doddering around the Capitol, but because he doesn't want to risk Obama thumping him in his moment of weakness and driving him into a deep hole from which he might never climb out. Worse yet, the first debate is set to be about foreign policy, McCain's strong suit; even if they stick to the script and McCain pulls off a victory, who the hell is going to care? Who wants to hear about how things are going in Gaul when Rome is burning? Putting off the debate is pure strategy, not wanting to risk getting exposed in moment of weakness, not wanting a presumptive strength to be sapped away by extraordinary events. The calculus, in any event, is thoroughly political: Obama's credibility > McCain's credibility.
Obama, himself on the way back to Washington, has not taken the bait. He has rightly insisted that there is a pressing need for debate: “Part of the president’s job is to deal with more than one thing at once. In my mind it’s more important than ever.” Put another way (about 2:30 in):
