Well, gee, John, thanks for agreeing to show up at tonight's debate, now that you've gotten the economy back on track. Oh, you haven't? Well, at least it's not your fault. According to you, John "the Maverick" McCain, the problem was that those damned DC insiders (i.e., your longstanding colleagues) were too busy playing the "blame game" to strike a deal.
Whenever a major national figure talks about "putting politics aside" for the good of the country, it's time to hang onto your wallet. So it is with John McCain and his suggestion about putting off tomorrow night's presidential debate so that he can ride into Washington and save the economy -- not to mention life as we know it. Barack Obama has put forward the same line (not on cancelling the debate, but on not "politicizing" the bailout), probably in self-defense, to avoid charges that he is a self-serving, unpatriotic, and -- god forbid! -- politically motivated person. Of course, it's all politics: the bailout is politics, the discussions over how to shape the bailout are politically driven, and the process that got us into the mess was shaped by politics. Why pretend otherwise? In the hopes that it might lull people to sleep and divert their attention from the question of who helped get us into this mess in the first place.
