The Day After

Beldar takes note of what John McCain was doing yesterday after the first presidential debate:

Senior adviser Mark Salter said the Arizona senator spent the morning at his campaign headquarters placing calls to congressional leaders and White House officials involved in finalizing a multibillion-dollar deal to bail out failing financial firms. Earlier in the week McCain suspended most campaign activities to help develop a bipartisan agreement....

"He can effectively do what he needs to do by phone," Salter said Saturday. "He's calling members on both sides, talking to people in the Administration, helping out as he can."

Two questions come instantly to mind after reading that quote:

1) If McCain "can effectively do what he needs to do by phone," why did he suspend his campaign and take the bipartisan cavalry tearing off to the Beltway last week?

2) Wasn't that pretty much the alibi Barack Obama came up with last week to excuse his blowing off McCain's invitation to join said cavalry?

Beldar's reaction to that quote is unwittingly telling, I think:

Once again, faced with the choice between country and career, John McCain chose country. He'd rather lose a campaign than risk our country's fundamental economic security.

And thanks to his rank negligence in failing to realize that, especially in a campaign like this one, when he advances "career" he advances "country" at the same time, John McCain is guaranteeing the loss of both.

Meanwhile, what was The Chosen One doing?  What a presidential candidate is SUPPOSED to be doing:

Obama, meanwhile, stuck to his campaign schedule which will take him and Biden from here to two other swing states this weekend: Virginia and Michigan....

Though he has dismissed the presidential candidates' intervention in the bailout talks as counterproductive grandstanding, Obama expressed forceful opinions about what the deal should — and should not — include.

"I will not allow this plan to become a welfare program for Wall Street executives," he told the crowd here. And he suggested an additional $50 billion in aid for the unemployed and investments in infrastructure should be part of the deal.

"Washington has to feel the same sense of urgency about passing an economic stimulus plan" as it does about rescuing mega-investors, said Obama, who spoke by phone Saturday about the state of the negotiations with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-MA.

Beldar rips Obama for not following McCain's selfless example.  But isn't it already long established that B.O. isn't a leader?  Has no political or any other sort of courage?  Has the character and integrity of a hyena?

I'll tell you, though, what he realizes of which Beldar and many of us on the Right have lost sight: False Messiah doesn't NEED to stick his neck out like McCain has because his party is using this financial crisis to drive the electorate in his direction.  Don't forget that McCain was lured back to D.C. by the Democrats and then double-crossed when he got there; or how much ground that's cost him in the polls in the past few days.  If Sailor had done what he's doing now, making phone calls behind the scenes and otherwise staying on the campaign trail where he belonged, he'd still be in this race, and perhaps more pressure would be on Barry to be more proactive.  But as things are turning out, why should he be?  His congressional allies have fatally wounded his opponent and have turned the polls in his direction.  Tactically speaking, he has every incentive to keep his mouth shut about this issue and stay out of the way.

Perhaps too many on my side of the aisle have imbibed the "country first" Kool-Aid.  Maybe they didn't even realize they were doing so.  But my reading of history, particularly that of contemporary American politics, is that the sort of selfless statesmanship that John McCain personifies is rarely honored at the time it is offered.  It is only seen as such long after the fact, whereas crass, manipulative, hardball, partisan politics has maximum impact precisely at the time it is most needed.  That's why conservatives are always left spluttering in outrage and frustration that voters can't SEE how unfit, unqualified, and unworthy a man like Barack Obama is to lead the Free World and elect such men to the highest office in the land, and how voters also seem incapable of recognizing what soulless zombies Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and their party are when they put the Dems in charge of Congress.

There is a difference, in short, between politicking and governing.  You don't get to do the latter without successfully doing the former.  And you can't successfully do the former if you're stopping in mid-stream and trying to do the latter at the same time.

Many believe John McCain can be a great president.  Maybe they're right.  But in order to show what a great leader and statesman he can be as president, he has to get elected first.  And that means putting "career" first.  If he does that, trust me, country will be along for that triumphant ride.  If he doesn't, country will crash and burn as well.