Your usual incisive commentary, EW. I wondered, myself, what McSame was (really) thinking when he suggested bailing on Barbour.
Thanks.

It wasn’t just Barbour, I’d bet. Lot of unhappyness at this stunt. The number of “leaks” of what McBush did and did NOT do at the table tells me that even Bush was peeved.

Bush arraigned that meeting and invited McBush in response to DESPERATE pleas from the McBush campaign. And not only does McBush NOT back the president after this, he actually makes things worse. Tweedledum and Tweedledumber. *snicker*

Boxturtle (Don’t think McBush will be invited back for awhile)

I think it may be even more basic than that. I think that, even though McCain is well ahead of Obama in Mississippi (by about 10-15 points right now), a no-show would seriously hurt him there and might even cost him the state. Small states tend to take stunts like this personally, and Mississippi only has about 3 million people. It’s about as big as Iowa, and no one would pull a stunt like this on Iowa.

In what possible sense is U. Miss. neutral ground?? Did the Dems do any negotiating on this at all??

I agree about the lobbyist influence, and the regional political impetus driving McCain to face the camera. I think it is the Reagan-like gravitation toward anything that looked like a device for placing his image onto the airwaves live that has moved McCain to go on with this particular debate show. The timing with the headlong drive to create an exit strategy for the Bush administration given the current flux of patent disasters which are the Republican party heritage from the past seven+ years incents McCain to loft the party standard once again with more muddled pronouncements. Where I would like the investment bank bailouts to go, rather than providing a McCainesque coverup for more Republican looting of the future economy, is to an opportunity for Barack Obama to fuse vision of humane foreign policy to restructuring of oversight of both Wall Street and international investment entities. That is to say, World Bank, IMF, OECD, IADB, the African Development Bank and similar entities all are familiar with obligate ‘transparencies’, also called pursestrings, attached to foreign aid. The current $700. BBN USD bailout needs to correlate with a fairer foreign policy, no more clearcutting third country forests to create mines or to create plantations for palm oil. As I take somewhat of a unitarist view of political theory, broadly, I would add to these gentlings of environmental impacts abroad a new globally shared look at population growth. Gone are the times when parrochial interests could obfuscate their polemical ways through the economics of over-population. As this comment draws yet farther offTopic filaments into the thread, it subsides Real Soon Now. In the northern coast of South America is the former British colony of Guyana. Consider these two articles about occurrences in the Arau River watershed in 2008 bearing images of mining industry purchasing leases, then crudely ignoring riparian protections in the fever to extract gold, diamonds, and other minerals. After all, it is our strong investment banks and their international assistance and development fund counterparts who underwrite many of the destructive escapades of the genre of the ongong Arau goldrush.

I expect some interesting opportunities for the candidates to show leadership, and one to walk away the natural voice of a new way of problem resolution in the encounter at this evening’s event. One of the keys to victory in 1960’s then unprecedented debates likely was their formality and brevity. Three such debates are enough to reveal the strengths and deficits of the actors.

I find it impossible to believe Democrats would retreat and start over to craft a “comprimise” with Republican pseudo-proposals as a negotiating point of departure. But they are Democrats. Please don’t let them squander the position of strength McCain’s buffoonery leaves them in. Obama has to emerge to hold McCain and his renegade band of “free market” fundamentalists up to ridicule and sweep them from the stage.

This is from a very guileless Karen Tumulty:

Here’s what I think: If the plan that passes looks pretty much like the deal that was announced yesterday, then McCain probably got in the way.

On the other hand, if a plan passes that includes signficant features of the Cantor/House Republican plan (especially this insurance feature), and if it ends up having truly bipartisan support in the House, then McCain deserves some credit.