Despite today's news reports, there never existed a "deal," but merely a proposal offered by a small, select group of Members of Congress. As of right now, there exists only a series of principles, including greater oversight and measures to address CEO pay. However, these principles do not enjoy a consensus in Congress.
At today's cabinet meeting, John McCain did not attack any proposal or endorse any plan. John McCain simply urged that for any proposal to enjoy the confidence of the American people, stressing that all sides would have to cooperate and build a bipartisan consensus for a solution that protects taxpayers.
However, the Democrats allowed Senator Obama to run their side of the meeting. That did not work as the meeting quickly devolved into a contentious shouting match that did not seek to craft a bipartisan solution.
I don't know why they would put Obama in that position, though it doesn't seem as if the media is really reporting that much of that part of it. At times I wonder about their decision making process when it comes to what is the smart thing to do. Then I really wonder when I read this article as it does not mention Obama's lead and claims Democrats blamed McCain...
Will McCain debate? I'm thinking the odds are less than 50/50 with lots of people speculating as to his reasoning, this school of thought is one I wouldn't overly disagree with:
The uncertainty of this situation makes me suspect that this was not done exclusively for strategic campaign considerations. Some have called it a desperate hail Mary - a risky gambit taken because the "bottom is dropping out." But that requires a pretty tendentious look at the polls. Five of the ten polls in the RCP national average show McCain down by three points or less. Gallup has a tie today. That is not consistent with the "bottom dropping out."
Instead, I suspect that, as with the Palin pick, this is McCain being McCain. He didn't like the situation. So, he did something. We've seen him do stuff like this again and again over the years. Lieberman gave the best description of McCain at the Republican convention: he's a restless reformer. I think that McCain being McCain, he felt restless - so he went to Washington to do something.
Regardless of how we might feel about his decision - we can agree that McCain has once again affected the race by his actions. This is the second time he has done this in a month. It's become an ironic feature of this campaign. While most agree that the election will hinge upon public considerations of Barack Obama, so much of the campaign itself has hinged upon the actions of John McCain.
Considering this debate was supposed to be about foreign policy, despite the political gamesmanship of Obama not wanting to cancel/postpone, whether they debate or not, no one is going to get any answers as to the current "financial crisis" tomorrow night in Oxford.
McCain is stating if no deal is reached tomorrow he's not showing up. Then what happens? Obama debates himself? Questions that won't be answered until tomorrow...
2 comments:
Dunno what's gonna happen tomorrow, but my sources (Repubs and Dems) say it was John Boehner who created the havoc in today's meeting. I'm told Obama did ask questions that Boehner had no answers for (as did others -- it was a two hour meeting) and McCain didn't speak at all for the first 45 minutes. When he did, he said that House conservatives have some issues that should be addressed.
It's true that there never was a deal. There was an agreement on "a set of principles" that apparently did not include the conservative House Republicans, whose main argument is apparently that they don't want government money to be used in the bailout (oh, NOW they remember they're fiscal conservatives too). What they do want is private money to save the private corporations. And to make that happen, they want lower taxes and less regulation. Really, it's a pretty good opportunity for McCain to curry favor with the conservatives, who don't think he is one, and distance himself from Bush. There's political gamesmanship going on on all sides here.
But I do think you're right that it is McCain being McCain, which unfortunately often results in not fully thought out actions.
I have to admit I'm baffled by all this, though. It's not like this financial crisis just suddenly dropped out of the blue. But now, suddenly, we must do something about it and it must involve hundreds of billions (probably trillions, especially when you add in the bailouts that have already taken place) of dollars on a plan that nobody can say for certain will work, and, in fact, some say may make it all worse. I'm just untrusting and cynical enough to believe the impetus for Getting Something Done Now is related to the election and making sure a Republican stays in the White House.
Although I did hear a conspiracy theory on the radio tonight. Something about 12 families whose goal is to snarf up as many assets as possible, and the collapse of the American economy is part of their nefarious plan to Gain Control of Everything and establish the New World Order. It almost (and I stress almost) started to make sense until the guy said they were all international families and they owned all the media in the world and used their Powers to make the U.S. media tell Americans how wonderful everything is while at the same time making the international media tell everyone else how awful America is, thus turning the entire world against the United States. It was all them furrinners, y'see, and no, it wasn't Lou Dobbs.
But anyway, I'm just not sure if McCain will go to Oxford. I could see either happening. And I can also see, should McCain say early enough for sure that he's not going, Obama not going either.
When you really come down to it, this election is a mess. I wish we could start over.
I'm going to be very upset if McCain shows up for a debate/campaign op instead of sticking in DC until a resolution is hammered out. If our fractured Congress can play well with others and come together for a solution - I'll kiss the ground. But I doubt it.
We have self-serving politicians in both the House and Senate that would rather see the demise of America (and make no mistake about it - that's exactly what we are facing) than do their job in a diplomatic fashion.
There is a time for self-service and campaigning and there is a time to answer a true national emergency.
We need real leaders and we need them now. For those who are simple minded enough that they cannot comprehend a national bankruptcy - this is a crisis that has never been seen in our country's history. We have the option of staving off an economic collapse (including our currency) before it happens. But it will take real leadership to correct this shipwreck and I'm sorry to say that these are not the folks that we put into office.
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