So, as far as I can tell, the story so far is:

McCain sees an opportunity to look presidential and experienced. He announces he’s suspending his campaign so he can rush to DC, although he in fact takes 22 hours to get there and manages to squeeze in some interviews, a speech at Pres. Clinton’s event, and a nice dinner. Plus, his surrogates stay out on the trail bashing Obama, and McCain continues his ad campaign. Other than that, the campaign is completely suspended.

Then, to show that he is not a marginalized Senator on the fringes of economic discussion, he encourages conservative Republicans to back out of the deal the two parties had brokered in a genuine spirit of bi-partisanship so that McCain can spearhead some alternate proposal. Why? Well, since McCain’s original comments — in which he tacitly accepted Obama’s statement of principles — seemed to go along with the deal the two sides had worked out, I can only conclude that McCain would have disrupted any agreement so that he can be perceived as coming up with the new one.

The Democrats are pretty much boxed in. If they make any concessions at all to McCain’s new proposal, McCain will trumpet that he’s the one who saved the economy by wringing changes from the Dems (while ignoring that the original deal before McCain stepped in to “save” us had been bi-partisan).

So, clever move by McCain. Too bad it’s a clever move motivated by McCain’s ambitions rather than by what’s best for the country. For example, today’s economic slide is directly due to McCain’s self-centered disruption of the process.

Nice, John. See you at the debate.

Or not.

[Tags: mccain obama politics economy ]

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On Friday at 9pm EDT (-5 GMT), if you want to talk, cheer, and snark together about the debate, feel free to join irc.freenode.net/#debatejoho. We had lively and enjoyable chat sessions during the Democratic convention, so maybe we will again.

Note that this is an old fashioned IRC chat, requiring some type of chat client. (I use chatzilla, a Firefox add-in.)

[Tags: politics obama mccain debate ]

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Whatever happens with the budget agreement, I can’t imagine that McCain’s going to agree to debate on Friday after taking himself out of three days of debate prep.

Well, we’ll see.

And if McCain is a no-show, don’t we hope and assume that Obama will take questions from the audience (at home and in the venue) for the full span of the debate?[Tags: politics mccain obama debate ]

That Friday: I was wrong. I didn’t think McCain would so blatantly change his conditions. Foolish me.

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McCain’s suspending of his campaign is so very odd that I find myself looking for psychological, and not just political, explanations. So, try on this armchair psychoanalysis, keeping in mind that I’m just making this stuff up:

First, assume that McCain is desperate. When Fox puts you at 39%, desperation becomes reality-based thinking. Second — and this is the unpleasant part — imagine that McCain has had the thought that many of us had had: A terrorist attack in October would shake up the entire electoral chessboard, and might well favor the Republicans. (Yeah, yeah, I don’t think it should it, either.)

Now, no one wants a terrorist attack (except, um, the terrorists), including John McCain, of course. But we’re talking psychology here. So, could it be that McCain is reacting to the financial meltdown as if it were a large-scale terrorist attack because deep within him, he’s waiting for the crisis that saves him, the crisis that lets the aging warrior put on his flight suit one more time?

After all, the subtext of his “putting country first” trope isn’t patriotism but heroism. Heroes need crises. McCain’s brand of heroism consists of sacrifice: He gave up 5 years of his life in North Vietnam, and now he’s willing to give up campaigning.

McCain’s political problem is that in this case, his self-sacrifice seems unnecessary and can be taken as panic or cowardice. It seems like sacrifice for sacrifice’s sake. He thus runs the risk of voters turning away from the hero-without-a-cause to the leader who has one.

[Tags: mccain politics obama ]

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Here’s an idea I’m taking from a mailing list. I’ll check with the guy who posted it [Later: It was John Laprise] to see if I can credit him, but I’m sure he’s ok with the idea itself being circulated:

Obama ought to counter-propose that instead of postponing the debate, it ought to be changed to a debate on the economy, and opened up to public questions, as a way for the candidates to address the concerns of citizens.

Nice idea.

[Tags: obama debates mccain politics ]

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Here‘s a sweet photo of Obama.

[Tags: obama fanboy ]

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Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times has blogged transcripts of press conferences given by the two candidates yesterday:

Barack Obama

John McCain

[Tags: obama mccain economy politics ]

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The Obama campaign changed its tech policy statement, raising concerns that it was backtracking on its commitments. Now the campaign has explained that the changes were an attempt to de-geek the language and the original policy statement is still up on their site. The campaign says:

We’ve been updating the entire website to ensure consistency across the pages. The full tech plan is still available on the page, so there is absolutely no substantive change to our policy — folks who want more information can click to get our full plan.

To my reading, the explanation is consistent with the edits.

[Tags: obama tech_policy campaign ]

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You don’t get this very often: A single sentence that disqualifies a candidate not because of a scandal or a slip, but because it is an clear and forthright expression of the candidate’s beliefs. This is from a statement McCain wrote for Contingencies, published by the American Academy of Actuaries (via Paul Krugman):

“Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”

[Tags: mccain politics obama ]

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Talking Points Memo has a bunch of posts (latest) about the odd interview McCain gave to Radio Caracol Miami.

You can hear the unedited, original interview here. Or this embedded player (well, iframe) might work in some browsers, albeit not in mine: The first half is one economics. About halfway through, the interviewer asks about Venezuela and Bolivia. In response to a question about taking Latin America more seriously, McCain says: “I know the issues. I know the leaders.” Indeed, he gets them right.

About 3/4 of the way through, the interviewer asks him if he’d invite Zapatero to the White House. She says his full name — José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — which might have thrown him, since he gives his generic answer about meeting with those who support democracy, and then starts talking about Mexico. It seems pretty clear to me that he didn’t catch the name and didn’t want to alienate the Florida audience by seeming to be thrown by the interviewer’s properly accented pronunciation. He then, unfortunately, gives a response about being willing to meet with friends of democracy, as if that were in doubt about Spain. The interviewer then explicitly says she’s talking about the president of Spain, and McCain repeats his answer. Since that’s a pretty dumb response when talking about an ally, I’m assuming that McCain felt he had dug himself into a hole and didn’t want to crawl out by admitting his error. The price, however, is a needless flap with an ally. [Tags: mccain obama politics spain ]

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