Craziest pills

Holy smokes. John McCain wants to suspend his campaign and postpone Friday's debate? The mind reels.

There are any of a number of ways that this can be exposed as a crass, desperate, political stunt (perhaps to divert attention away from Freddie Mac "consultant"/campaign manager Rick Davis), but I'd like to talk just for a minute about governing.

You see, there's this myth that John McCain hopes you're stupid enough to subscribe to: that Congress is just 600-odd guys and gals in a big room, running around like useless, foolish idiots. And when the going gets tough, all they need is a no-nonsense maverick to step in and knock some heads together and get people to focus. And John McCain is just that maverick!

My friends, that's not faith-in-the-intelligence-of-American-citizens that we can believe in.

The reality of the matter is that whatever this bailout legislation is going to look like, it's going to come out of the relevant Senate and House committees. These are the folks who are spending their week going back and forth with Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke. The people whose job it is to like, you know, know things about banking and finance. Not to go Schoolhouse Rock on you or anything, but these are the few key Congressmen that Bill was singing about.

Click on those links, and one of the things you'll notice is that neither John McCain nor Barack Obama are on the Senate Banking Committee. What does that mean? It means that NEITHER OF THEM HAVE SHIT TO SAY ABOUT THIS BILL! Sweet fancy Moses, people, we have a process in place here! If John McCain wants to break his Cal Ripken–like streak of not voting in the Senate by casting his vote on whatever bill comes out of the Banking Committee, that's great. But in the meantime, he'd just be getting in the way.

Oh, don't worry, I read this:

“I am calling on the President to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Barack Obama and myself,” Mr. McCain said in New York on Wednesday afternoon. “It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem.”

But the leadership is already meeting! He wants to get President Bush involved in this! That should disqualify McCain from the presidency right off the bat. Matt Yglesias has it right. So does the estimable representative of my former district, the pride of Bayonne, Barney Frank:

"It's the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of either football or Marys."