Thankfully, John McCain has suspended his campaign for the good of the nation.
If only it were permanently.
Of course, after a week of negotiations and back-and-forth, a deal on the Wall Street bailout plan is pretty much finished:
In a briefing for reporters, Frank said agreement had been reached in several broad areas, among them: creation of an independent oversight board to monitor the Treasury Department's handling of the bailout and a requirement that the department seek to minimize home foreclosures by slicing the interest rate and even the outstanding loan amount of many of the troubled mortgages it buys.
Frank said at the early afternoon briefing that he and Paulson had also agreed to a Democratic proposal for Washington to get rights to buy stock in the companies whose troubled assets the government buys. That would allow taxpayers to benefit from increases in the companies' stock prices. But by the end of the day Frank indicated that an obstacle to agreement on such a provision had developed, though he didn't elaborate.
And:
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had agreed to demands from lawmakers in both parties to limit the pay of executives whose companies benefit from the bailout. The enormous pay packages of some Wall Street executives, coupled with the realization among nonwealthy Americans that the crisis could affect their financial foundations, have created an incendiary issue on Capitol Hill.
So, after a week of negotiations, progress has moved forward without JohnnyMac. McCain didn’t feel the need to be in Washington two days ago--indeed, he hasn’t been in Washington since April--so this "let's cancel the debate to focus on the economic crisis" is bizarre, to say the least.
Clearly he’s either too chickenshit to show up for a debate on Friday night while his poll numbers are sinking, or he’s trying to sail into town to claim credit for something he had nothing to do with.
And if it’s the latter, well, this wouldn’t be the first time.
