Friday, September 26, 2008

More details on Mr. McCain goes to Washington

This interesting detail is from The Washington Post:

The first debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, scheduled for tonight, remained in limbo last night after the presidential candidates left a White House meeting without a deal on a $700 billion economic rescue plan.

Democrats immediately blamed McCain for disrupting the effort at compromise, saying his decision to suspend his campaign and return to Washington shifted the klieg lights of the White House contest to the tense and delicate congressional negotiations.

[....]

At the White House, the gathering turned contentious when House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) brought up a new set of principles that conservative House Republicans had been laid out earlier in the day.

Boehner's move was received poorly by Obama and the other Democrats, who quickly pressed McCain to say whether he supported Boehner's position, according to a detailed account of the meeting. McCain declined to commit, one source said.

[....]

For much of yesterday, McCain shuttled between meetings and his Senate office, but rarely came close to the Capitol suites and committee rooms where the talks were taking place. He had returned to his Crystal City condominium by 6 p.m., where aides said he continued to work the phones in support of the deal.

Earlier, McCain had emerged from his office in the Russell Senate Office Building to a crush of reporters, saying nothing as he made his way to Boehner's office. In tow were a trio of his closest allies, Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), as well as top campaign aides Rick Davis and Mark Salter.

Boehner and McCain discussed the bailout plan, but Republican leadership aides described the conversation as somewhat surreal. Neither man was familiar with the details of the proposal being pressed by House conservatives, and up to the moment they departed for the White House yesterday afternoon, neither had seen any description beyond news reports.

At 1:25 p.m., McCain left Boehner's office through a back door, walking across the Capitol's rotunda to the applause of tourists. Graham conceded the group knew little about the plan the nominee had come to Washington to try to shape.

Mr. McCain goes to Washington to play presidential politics. It was all about the McCain campaign trying to make John McCain appear "presidential" in rejecting a compromise bailout plan, created by President Bush and the congressional Democrats, for some surrealistic House GOP plan that neither McCain, or even Boehner, had a clue about the details of the House GOP plan. And let us not forget that McCain never bothered to read the three-page long Bush / Paulson bailout plan. John McCain's crass, presidential ambitions totally destroyed whatever bailout agreement was taking shape this week between the Bush administration and the congressional Democratic leadership.

John McCain is clearly incapable of running the Oval Office. At this point, I would say that President George W. Bush is a better president than John McCain could ever become.

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