AlchemyToday

Apparently, the surest evidence of suspending one’s Presidential campaign and reaching across the aisle is by arriving in Washington, DC with your campaign manager (a financial industry lobbyist) and meeting with these guys:

“McCain left his office and took the subway to the capitol. He is now in Minority Leader John Boehner’s office with Sens. Jon Kyl, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman. [Campaign manager] Rick Davis was on the subway with McCain but I don’t know if he went into Boehner’s office.”

If you’re keeping score at home, that’s three Republcan congressman and an independent (who happens to be a co-chair of McCain’s campaign).  Remeber: the first step in sidestepping partisan gridlock is huddling with your team and figuring out your strategy for entering negotations.

Update: McCain will be assisted by a campaign aide tonight at his White House meeting; Obama will be accompanied by his Senate counsel.  Who else came to DC with McCain after suspending his campaign besides Rick Davis and Doug Holtz-Eatkin?

From McCain’s leaked talking points yesterday:

John McCain is calling on the President to convene a meeting with the leadership of both houses of Congress, including himself and Senator Obama.

From George Bush’s remarks last night:

There is a spirit of cooperation between Democrats and Republicans and between Congress and this administration. In that spirit, I’ve invited Senators McCain and Obama to join congressional leaders of both parties at the White House tomorrow to help speed our discussions toward a bipartisan bill.

Leaving aside the fact that neither Senator McCain nor Senator Obama is in a leadership position in Congress, the only explanations for McCain and Bush’s statements are:

1. Collusion between them
2. One is lying
3. Coincidence

Can’t imagine what it might be.

I’ve seen a number of folks make comments along the lines of, “What does McCain mean by suspending his campaign?  He still had an interview on CBS, is speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative, and met with Lady Lynn de Rothschild yesterday… what parts of his campaign are suspended?”

Fair point, but it misses what’s really indicated by this apparent inconsistency: it’s clear that McCain first seriously considered and then decided on this course of action within a maximum of 7 hours.  My proof assumes that the McCain campaign operates in a logically coherent manner respecting some self-evident rules of running a campaign, which might be overgenerous.  First, the relevant timeline:

1. McCain releases two web ads unrelated to the economy yesterday (picture from JohnMcCain.com at 8:34AM 9/25):
   
2. McCain’s campaign held a conference call to discuss an ABC News poll at 10:30AM yesterday.
3. McCain met with Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild sometime after 8:30AM yesterday.
4. McCain proposed the campaign suspension to Obama at 2:30PM yesterday.
5. McCain announces campaign suspension at 5:30PM yesterday.

Under the assumption that McCain’s campaign is not completely broken, it should be a rule that, when considering totally suspending your campaign on the basis of finishing a bill to forestall economic disaster, you would avoid events unrelated to said economic meltdown.  There are three documented activities yesterday by McCain, McCain’s ad team, and McCain’s polling/press staff above that are completely unrelated to the Wall St. bailout.

Based on these observations, it’s clear that neither McCain nor his press/polling/advertising operations were seriously considering the prospect of a campaign suspension until after 10:30AM yesterday.  This means that, in the absence of any earth shaking developments in the financial markets, McCain started considering and then decided on this path within just a few hours.  I understand that McCain prides himself on being decisive, but there’s a better word for his actions yesterday: rash.

It’s simply mind-blowing to think that our next President could be so totally unprepared in a situation that’d been developing for weeks at least (Obama’s been consistent on this for years, but let’s ignore that for now).  The President needs contingency plans to be ready to spring into action for a billion different things, and the McCain campaign’s off-the-wall, incoherent response here is really startling.  McCain was clearly operating through the first half of yesterday under the assumption that he was  campaigning as usual and then completely reversed course with zero intervening events of note.  If McCain were President today and had given the speech that George Bush gave last night, there’d be an odds on chance that he’d show up on TV tonight and announced TVA 2.0 to drag us out of depression, or announce an end to the bailout and the beginning of survival of the fittest on Wall St. — who knows?

I just found out about (and rode) the until-now-secret-to-me 32-minute MARC from DC’s Union Station to Baltimore’s Penn (7:21AM – 7:53A; right on schedule).  I suspect that this train exists for the purpose of quickly returning a MARC car to the other end of the line for another rush-hour return trip, but it seems that putting a small train on a similarly fast route in the the other direction would increase interest in Baltimore City living (and having another run at night for the return commute).  It’s 15-20 minutes off the normal ride, but I think that’d make the difference in the feasibility of a commute with additional transport tacked onto either end.