If we all are really in the shitter, why hasn’t McCain asked his veep candidate to join him in Washington to address the crisis outside of any political agenda?
No, I didn’t write that last sentence without coughing into my morning coffee. Look: I’m just trying to follow the logic of hysterics here.
Weigel is making sense:
Nothing has changed in the last 48 hours except the possibility of Congress staying at work until Sunday and some bad polls for McCain. It’s most assuredly a stunt, as John McCain and Barack Obama don’t really matter right now, and McCain’s action makes the bailout debate look even more (if such a thing is possible) like a world-historical crisis. Has a presidential debate ever been postponed 48 hours before it was supposed to start?
Jaisalmar, India, 8.55 am.
Poulos gets queasy over my citing this quote by Reinhold Niebuhr.
Clive Crook wrote this before McCain hastily suspended his campaign and asked Obama to do the same. It seems even more relevant now:
I do think Obama is handling the crisis much better than McCain–not because he is suggesting better remedies (he continues to say little), but because his instinct to reflect before opening his mouth and his impeccable taste in advisers are both working to his advantage.
Unlike McCain, Obama offers no instant bold responses, needing to be qualified or withdrawn or forgotten soon after. As ever, he looks calm, methodical and unruffled–and has his picture taken in conference with Paul Volcker, Bob Rubin and Larry Summers, who command wide respect. His response may be thin, so far, on content, but it is an altogether more reassuring posture than his rival’s tendency to hasty and exaggerated certainty.
Megan passes judgment on the various bailout plans.
Jamie Kirchick searches high and low:
Several news outlets have reported Palin’s assertion, made during the gubernatorial campaign, that she "has gay friends." Finding these individuals has been difficult. "We don’t know anything about that friend," says Marsha Buck, president of the Anchorage-based gay rights group Alaskans Together for Equality. "If that friend or those friends are Alaskans, we don’t know anything about them. We’re wondering maybe if it’s a friend who lives in the lower 48."
Or maybe she’s just making things up as she goes along.
What the Washington Post did with a blogger’s emails and how the McCain camp treated good-faith inquiries for simple facts is all laid out here. I will keep asking the McCain campaign until they provide the facts and the evidence. And I will not stop asking factual questions of public officials. That’s my commitment to you.
Prairie Weather backs me up on the ethics of the Howie Kurtz story and the McCain campaign’s actions:
It stinks. The Post, not to mention the McCain campaign, owes Sullivan an apology at the very least. By now we don’t expect probity from the McCain campaign but the Post still has a reputation to protect. Doesn’t it?
Sullivan tells the whole story at his own site. Meanwhile, we have John McCain’s number and we now know just what Howard Kurtz is made of. It will be interesting to see whether the Post has the cojones (and the good judgment) to kick Kurtz where it will inflict the most pain — or maybe out the door.
Jonathan Chait proposes:
I wonder if it’s a strategic ploy. The thinking: McCain is behind in the polls, largely because the economic crisis is dominating the campaign. The best weapon left in McCain’s arsenal is the foreign policy debate, which could potentially turn the election back to McCain’s stronger issue. If the debate’s in the middle of an economic crisis, it won’t have the impact they need. So: postpone the foreign policy debate until after the bailout has been passed, and then maybe you can change the conversation to foreign policy for an extended period.
Country First!
The Dish 