McCain Offered No Leadership at White House Meeting

Friday, September 26, 2008 | Written by govgap | Printed in FRONT PAGE, INDEX

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Begala: “McCain sat at that meeting like a potted plant.”

The talks broke up in angry recriminations, according to accounts provided by a participant and others who were briefed on the session, and were followed by dueling news conferences and interviews rife with partisan finger-pointing.

Friday morning, on CBS’s “The Early Show,” Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the lead Democratic negotiator, said the bailout had been derailed by internal Republican politics.

Talks broke down into an embarrassing political episode:

“I didn’t know I was going to be the referee for an internal G.O.P. ideological civil war,” Mr. Frank said, according to The A.P.Thursday, in the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.

“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson’s kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange. She went on: “It’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”

Mr. Paulson sighed. “I know. I know.”

One Response

  1. btchakir September 26th, 2008 at 9:56 am

    So John McCain has “suspended” his campaign (which I guess, means get as much media attention as possible, continue with TV commercials, have your campaign offices nationwide push your candidacy and have your surrogates like Lieberman let everyone know how “presidential” you are being) to work on the Economic Crisis. So far he seems to have thrown a monkey wrench into it and we are not moving forward any more.

    It makes me wonder how much he understands about fiscal policy and what caused this mess anyway. In his interview with Katie Couric (you know, the one he did when he told Letterman he was canceling to get right back to Washington DC), McCain said:

    One of the major reasons why we’re having difficulties is we let spending get completely out of control — earmark and pork-barrel projects. Senator Obama asked for over $900 million in earmarks pork-barrel projects, that’s not part of the answer that’s part of the problem.

    Earmarks? Pork Barrel Projects? Wasn’t this problem called by cheap, bad mortgages? That’s what everyone else thinks.

    But McCain has been here before (via Think Progress.) On the failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina, for instance:

    “[McCain] places ’some of those responsibilities on the Congress of the United States, which funded pork barrel projects that were not only not needed and certainly not as important as some of the projects that were needed [in New Orleans].”

    Or what about the Minnesota Bridge Collapse?

    “The bridge in Minneapolis didn’t collapse because there wasn’t enough money,” McCain told reporters while campaigning in Pennsylvania. “The bridge in Minneapolis collapsed because so much money was spent on wasteful, unnecessary pork-barrel projects.”

    So now we’re wondering whether or not McCain will meet with Obama at tonite’s debate, or stay in DC to provide his financial expertise to solving this problem. Whatever happens, McCain will keep himself in the press all day… you’d better believe it. And all this with a “suspended” campaign.

    Say, maybe he could send Sarah Palin to debate for him tonite. Wouldn’t that be fun?

    Under The LobsterScope

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