The Note: You Break It . . .
'Pottery Barn' Rule Bites McCain, As Deal Collapses and Debate is in Doubt
By RICK KLEIN with HOPE DITTO
Sept. 26, 2008
RSS OXFORD, Miss. -- Sen. John McCain may or may not have broken the bailout bill -- and surely he didn't do so all by himself.
But he owns it now.
In the battle over perceptions, it really is this simple: There was a deal before McCain came back to Washington. There was not a deal by the time the evening ended. And now there might not be a bill -- or a first presidential debate Friday in Mississippi. Holding that very heavy bag are McCain and his GOP colleagues in Congress. Steve Schmidt gets his wish: McCain is in the middle of the action -- amid friendly fire, political gamesmanship, competing loyalties, reelection fights, and a White House with no juice left.
(And, oddly, the whole distraction has an upside for Team McCain: We're not talking about Gov. Sarah Palin, whose slow media rollout is maybe not going slow enough.)
"Democrats immediately blamed McCain for disrupting the effort at compromise, saying his decision to suspend his campaign and return to Washington shifted the klieg lights of the White House contest to the tense and delicate congressional negotiations," Michael D. Shear and Jonathan Weisman write in The Washington Post.
Oh yes, the debate.
We know that at least half of this strange non-team that saw the bailout bill go from done deal to just plain done Thursday at the White House will be making the trip to Ole Miss... SNIP
...Is this what McCain bargained for?
The would-be savior "found himself in the midst of a remarkable partisan showdown, lacking a clear public message for how to bring it to an end," The New York Times' Adam Nagourney and Elisabeth Bumiller write. "As a matter of political appearances, the day's events succeeded most of all in raising questions about precisely why Mr. McCain had called for postponing the first debate and returned to Washington to focus on the bailout plan, and what his own views were about what should be done."
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=3105288&page=1