It's a little hard to tell just what McCain's game is at this point. He pulls this big stunt of suspending his campaign to fix the financial crisis (but not really), goes to Washington, and pretty much keeps his mouth shut during negotiations because he doesn't have a clue (in stark contrast to Obama, who was fully engaged and peppered Paulson with questions). The deal then falls apart due to Congressional Republican objections, and McCain agrees to do the debate after all, even though he previously said he would not debate until a deal was worked out.
To be fair, it seems like the main opposition to the bailout was coming from embattled House Republicans, unwilling to be seen as supporting an unpopular handout to Wall Street while running for re-election. They came up with some nonsense about "insuring" the money market funds in question and a ridiculous idea to suspend the capital gains tax for two years (as Ezra Klein explains, no one is paying capital gains on any of these funds anyway, since they're all big losers).
So that's that. McCain accomplished nothing, exposed how small and unimportant he is when it comes to this issue, and yet again demonstrated that he is totally ignorant when it comes to economics. Possibly even worse, for all his grandstanding, he didn't do anything that Obama didn't also do. Obama was there for the negotiations. As I noted, he was engaged in the debate, much moreso than McCain. And all that without having to "suspend his campaign"! Imagine that.
There's just a couple of other things I'd like to post before my inevitable debate reaction later tonight:
This report, found via Balloon Juice, is pretty awesome to contemplate:
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."
Hee hee. I can't wait until October 2nd. Though we probably shouldn't lower expectations to such a degree that we'll be impressed if she so much as utters a complete sentence. But the complete and obvious lack of confidence in Palin's abilities being demonstrated by the McCain campaign can't be very encouraging for Republican loyalists.
Then there's this funny and appropriate video:
It's amazing how perfectly that fits.
Anyway, signing off until later tonight. Enjoy the debate everyone, it should be a dandy.
No comments:
Post a Comment