(AP Photo / Henny Ray Abrams)

Wall Street Journal, Sept. 29. 2008, re: the media's unfair coverage of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin:

From her campaign's perspective, Gov. Palin isn't getting media attention for her contributions. For example, with foreign leaders last week [at the United Nations], she had detailed conversations about the national-security and global implications of the energy crisis, one adviser said.

Stumper, Sept. 23, 2008, re: Palin's visit to the UN:

Originally, the McCain campaign indicated that two editorial journalists--Elizabeth Holmes of the Wall Street Journal and CNN embed Peter Hamby--would be allowed to attend the so-called “pool sprays” before Palin’s conclaves, which are basically "glorified photo opportunities during which journalists can snap photos and film footage and–if they’re lucky–shout a question or two at Palin"... But an hour before the events, the McCain campaign decided to bar both Holmes and Hamby, claiming that the sprays were appropriate only for photographers and videographers because "there were not going to be questions or statements."... Ultimately, Team McCain allowed CNN to cover the spray for all of 29 seconds--but only after the cable channel refused to send its cameras. Without CNN in the room, none of the networks would've received video footage, so the McCain campaign had to relent. Otherwise, it would've faced a total TV blackout. As for Holmes, she was out of luck--as was the print pool relying on her report.

Why won't the Eastern media elite ever report the good news?

UPDATE, 5:27 p.m.: I see that Noam Scheiber is asking the same question. Great minds...

Breaking news! John McCain and Barack Obama agree--at least in theory.

In response to the surprising collapse yesterday afternoon on Capitol Hill of the Bush Administration's $700 billion plan to bailout the imploding financial industry, both McCain and Obama called for--wait for it--"bipartisanship." Speaking this morning at an economic roundtable in Des Moines, Iowa, McCain bemoaned "the lack of resolve and bipartisan good will among members of both parties to fix this problem," reminding legislators that "bipartisanship is a tough thing--never more so when you’re trying to take necessary but publicly unpopular action." Meanwhile, Obama told supporters in Reno, Nev. that "while there is plenty of blame to go around...now is the moment for us to come together and put the fire out." What's more, both candidates floated the exact same proposal--increasing the federal deposit insurance cap from $100,000 to $250,000--as a way to make the package more palatable to wary House Republicans. So helpful!

The only problem? Despite all the bipartisan blather, both candidates have actually spent the past 24 hours jockeying for partisan advantage--especially on the airwaves. The point, of course, is to appear "above the fray" without sacrificing any possible political advantage.

Given that not all of you live in swing states, we thought it'd be worthwhile to harness the power of YouTube and bring the mudslinging to a computer screen near you.

McCain's hypocrisy has been more blatant than Obama's. First, McCain debated himself yesterday on the proper response to the bailout failure, denouncing the blame game precisely one sentence after (ahem) blaming Obama. "Sen. Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process," he said. "Now is not the time to fix the blame, it's time to fix the problem." The trend continued today. A mere 16 minutes after McCain again extolled the virtues of bipartisanship in Iowa, his campaign sent out a new ad, "Rein," that blames the financial meltdown solely on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and claims that "Mr. Obama was notably silent" when McCain pushed for stronger regulation of the mortgage giants. Bill Clinton even makes an unhelpful cameo:

But today's weirdest anti-Obama spot came from the RNC. As McCain took to television to urge the plan's passage and ask that it be referred to a "rescue" rather a "bailout," the GOP decided release an ad... attacking the same plan that McCain so ardently supports. "Wall Street squanders our money and Washington is forced to bail them out with--you guessed it--our money," says the announcer. "Can it get any worse?" The answer, according to the ad: yes it can--as long as America elects Barack Obama, whose "plan... will make the problem worse." Call it a twofer: contradicting McCain's ban on partisanship and his position on the bailout. All in one fell swoop:

Lest the day end on that ambivalent note, however, the McCain has just released yet another ad attacking Obama. This one, called "Strong," slams the Senator for saying yesterday that "we've got the long-term fundamentals that will really make sure this economy grows" after spending a week or so flogging McCain's infamous "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" remark for his own political advantage. Its conclusion doesn't exactly strike a bipartisan note: "Obama's a hypocrite." (Unfortunately for McCain, Obama was referring to the "long-term fundamentals" of his own economic plan--not the fundamentals of the economy itself.) Watch it and weep:

Obama, for his part, is no angel--even if he hasn't proven to be as aggressively hypocritical as McCain. In response to the RNC ad, Obama spox Bill Burton chastised "John McCain’s party" for "demagogu[ing] a rescue plan that he supports in order to score cheap political points." That was appropriate. But Burton proceeded to ratchet up the rancor for no particular reason, implying that McCain is a "dishonest and dishonorable" character who no longer puts "country first"--even though the McCain camp had no involvement with the ad in question, which was produced by the RNC's independent expenditure wing. Meanwhile, Obama communications director Robert Gibbs, appearing today on MSNBC's Morning Joe, called McCain's reaction to the crisis "erratic" and likened him to an unsteady driver--a not-so-subtle dig at the Republican nominee's age. "This guy zigzags," Gibbs said. "Look, if he's driving a car, get off the sidewalk." Finally, Obama himself points a finger squarely at the GOP in "Same Path," his latest TV spot. "The old trickle-down theory has failed us," he says, going on to catalog its alleged failures. The ad is largely substantive--a sober two-minute synopsis of Obama's economic plan. Still, its secondary message--that Republicans alone are responsible for the current crisis--contradicts the candidate's claim, voiced this morning in Reno, that now is not the "time to punish those who set this fire." Never mind that Democrats--bipartisanship alert!--are to blame as well. 

Do I expect Obama and McCain to resist poking each other for partisan advantage at a time like this? Of course not. But the next time they reach for their shivs, they could spare us the bipartisan boilerplate. With 35 days until Nov. 4, most voters are smart enough to realize that politics comes first.

Expertinent is a regular Stumper column featuring interviews with experts on the news of the day.

By Mary Charmichael

Barack Obama and John McCain have put forth radical—and radically different—proposals to change the way Americans do, or don't, get health insurance. Is it really possible to make sure everyone's covered? Are the candidates even trying for that? And what lessons can we learn from Massachusetts, which has embarked on its own experiment with universal health care? NEWSWEEK's Mary Carmichael spoke with Katherine Swartz, a professor of health policy and economics at Harvard who studies insurance and recently published an in-depth analysis of the McCain plan:

CARMICHAEL: McCain wants to take away the tax break workers get on health insurance at their jobs, and instead give people who buy their own insurance $2,500 in tax credits. Families would get $5,000. What do you make of this idea?
SWARTZ: The positive part is that it would reduce favoritism in the tax system. If you're unemployed, or if you're with a small employer who doesn't provide health insurance, you don't get any special treatment [taxwise] on insurance now. The bad part is that the tax credit could make it harder for low-income people to get insured. In the current system, a lot of low-income people with jobs are getting insurance they could never afford on their own.

The credit is supposed to help.
But you have to purchase health insurance to get the tax credit, and low-income people still may not be able to do that. For a family, insurance premiums in the nongroup markets are typically above $700 a month, and that's with a deductible of at least $5,000. We're talking $8,400 a year in premium payments, but the tax credit is only for $5,000. You still have to pay $3,400, plus the deductible, before the insurance covers medical expenses. Also, the type of coverage on the individual market typically does not cover as many services as group policies. If you buy your own policy, when you get sick, you are going to pay more out of pocket.

Can you explain McCain's plan to help out people with previously existing conditions by expanding "high-risk pools"?
We've had state-sponsored high-risk pools for several decades, but they cover fewer than 200,000 people. They were set up so insurance companies could essentially cede people who they predicted would have very high health-care costs. At one point McCain said he would subsidize high-risk pools with between $7 billion and $10 billion a year. That would cover maybe 3 million people, which is not much of a dent in the 47 million people without insurance now.

How many people would be insured under McCain's proposals, compared to today?
My colleagues and I have predicted that around 21 million people in the first year would lose access to health insurance because their employers would stop offering it. About 21 million higher-income people would take the tax credits and buy their own insurance. So it would be a wash in the first year. We worry that within five years, more employers would stop offering insurance, and we'd end up with more people uninsured than there are now.

Now let's look at Obama's plan. What exactly is an insurance exchange?
The one he's proposing looks a lot like the Health Connector we have in Massachusetts. It acts as a clearinghouse where people can buy insurance policies that are essentially given the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval by the state. In the Obama plan, there's a minimum set of benefits every plan has to offer, and if your income is below some threshold yet to be specified, you would get a subsidy. Small businesses could also use this exchange to provide health insurance. This has worked very well in Massachusetts.

And his national health plan?
It's basically one more choice offered in the exchange. It sets a floor for what kinds of services the other plans would have to offer. Here's where we have to start thinking about the total cost. If the national plan is quite generous in terms of services covered, the proposal's cost will be more than the campaign is estimating.

In Massachusetts, costs have already gotten out of control.
Costs are higher than expected, but that's partly because the original projections underestimated the number of uninsured people who were eligible for subsidies. It's also partly because health-care costs are rising—and that's the case everywhere.

Obama would also require insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions. Wouldn't insurers raise premiums?
Yes, premiums may be higher. I think people need to consider the alternative—if patients are closed off from coverage, they still go to the ER, and we all pay for that.

Does the Obama plan actually provide universal coverage?
No. It requires that children be covered, but there's no mandate for other individuals. Some adults would continue to be uninsured—roughly 6 percent of the nonelderly, compared with 17 percent now, so many more people would have insurance than do now.

Obama's plan is very ambitious. How on earth can we pay for it?
Given the federal deficit, that's a problem for both plans. McCain's plan is not cheap either. I think it will be hard for either candidate to do much in the next few years.

READ THE REST HERE.

The current Real Clear Politics electoral map reflects the latest polls; it is not a prediction of the outcome

Forget the impending financial apocalypse for a second. Who the heck is winning this thing?

The last time we asked that question, the answer didn't bode particularly well for Barack Obama. It was Sept. 15, and John McCain was still enjoying his post-convention bounce. Although Obama held a slight, 273-265 lead on the electoral map, I wrote, "the Red States had gotten redder--and the Blue States had gotten purpler" since the Democrats left Denver. What's more, McCain had an "advantage in the [Real Clear Politics] average [of national surveys]--his first since Hillary Clinton hung up her spurs."

"What the last week of polling has shown beyond any doubt," I concluded, "is that McCain's successful convention and shocking choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate have shifted the map ever so slightly to the right, transforming a landscape that favored Obama into a landscape that favors, well, no one."

Not anymore.

It's been two weeks since we last surveyed the state of play--but for McCain it's probably felt more like an eternity. First, the Wall Street meltdown shifted the spotlight to a subject (the economy) that voters typically trust Democrats to deal with--and McCain's controversial response did little to close the gap. According to the latest CBS News/New York Times poll, for example, 64 percent of likely voters said they're either very or somewhat confident that Obama would "make the right decisions" on the econony, compared to only 55 percent for McCain (his "not confident" rating: 45 percent). Meanwhile, Palin's approval ratings have plummeted after a series of shaky interviews from 60 percent or more (circa St. Paul) to less than 50 percent today, as her disapproval ratings have crept up near the 40 percent mark. Overlaid upon the immutable anti-Republican contours of the race--three-quarters of voters say the country is on the wrong track; Democrats typically hold a dozen-point advantage in generic Congressional polling--McCain's dodgy fortnight has boosted Obama to his most commanding lead since the general election began in earnest.

In other word, Obama is winning.

Let's look at the numbers. From the end of the primary season on June 3 until the shortly before the start of the Democratic Convention late last month, the Real Clear Politics average--a blend of the most recent half dozen or so national match-ups between Obama and McCain--told an essentially static story: despite never breaking the magical 50 percent mark, Obama led McCain by a steady three to six points for months. But two back-to-back conventions--which typically mark the point when the public begins to pay attention--scrambled those jets, and by Sept. 8, McCain was ahead in the RCP round-up by about three points (48.3 to 45.4). That would be his high-water mark. Starting on Sept. 15, McCain's average has slipped four points (from 47 to 43 percent). Meanwhile, Obama has made mirror-image gains, climbing from a low point of 44.7 percent to today's high of 48. Not counting his artifical post-Denver spike, Obama's current average national lead over McCain (about five points) and level of support (48 percent) are his most robust since the dog days of mid-July. No national poll taken since Sept. 22--with the exception of one flawed outlier--shows Obama with anything less than a five-point lead. Four soundings since Sept. 19 put his support over the magical 50 percent mark. 

But as every political junkie knows, presidential elections are fought on a state-by-state basis--not in the national polls. So what's happening on the ground? Much of the map has not changed since we last checked in: Obama is still winning every state he was winning on Sept. 15, and McCain still leads in most of his old, familiar territory as well. That said, there have been a few significant shifts over the past two weeks--and all of them favor Obama.

First, two states that preferred McCain last time around--Virginia and North Carolina--have gone from red to blue. Virginia is no surprise. A prime Obama pick-off possibility, it has switched sides a whopping seven times this cycle, and neither candidate has ever led there by more than three points. Still, it's significant that Obama now holds his largest average advantage of the year--a still-slim 1.4 percent. North Carolina is more surprising. On Sept. 15, McCain was clobbering Obama 52 percent to 41 percent in the RCP average. But over the past two weeks, a pair of surveys--PPP and Rasmussen--have given him a two-point edge in their latest soundings; other polls show a sudden tie. As a result, Obama now leads in North Carolina by a razor-thin 0.7 percent margin. Of course, the Illinois senator is still a longshot in Tar Heel country. That said, the GOP doesn't want to be defending a state George W. Bush won by 13 points.

The second development may be even more troubling for McCain. According to RCP, every single blue state on the Arizona's target list has become bluer since the middle of the month. On Sept 17, McCain trailed Obama by a mere 2.7 percent in Wisconsin. But the two polls released since then--Research 2000 and Quinnipiac--show Obama leading by a solid six and seven points, respectively. Minnesota is a similar story: a 1.3 percent average gap on Sept. 17 has since doubled, and the only survey (Rasmussen) taken entirely since that date puts Obama up by eight, 52-44. Meanwhile, Obama's average lead in Pennsylvania has increased from 1.3 percent to 5.5 percent over the same period of time, and his advantage in Michigan--McCain's top target--has ballooned from two points to more than six. When fitted with the final piece in the puzzle--growing Obama leads the Bush states of Iowa (9.2 percent), New Mexico (6.0 percent) and Colorado (5.0 percent)--it's hard to see how McCain reaches 270 electoral votes. Unless, of course, something changes--which it undoubtedly will. 

As it stands now, McCain has fewer plausible paths to victory. To win, Obama needs only to retain to Kerry's 251 electoral votes and flip Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado--all three of which he currently leads by an average of five points or more. What's more, if Colorado slips away, Obama could still pick off Virginia, Ohio (where McCain leads by a mere 1.2 percent on average) or Florida (where McCain's average advantage has plummeted since mid-month from more than six points to less than one). McCain, on the other hand, needs to win a big Kerry state like Michigan or Pennsylvania while retaining BOTH Colorado and Virginia; if he loses either, he'll be forced to poach even more property from the Democratic column. That would be a daunting task. According to RCP, Obama would win 301 to 237 if the election were held today.

Does this mean that McCain is toast? Hardly. As September has shown, support for the candidates can fluctuate wildly in response to events, and there's still time remaining on the clock for a comeback. Obama could still lose--easily. But it's impossible to ignore the fact that the Arizona senator now faces a steeper climb than ever before--with fewer days left for climbing.  As the New Republic's John Judis has pointed out, "since 1960, Gallup’s [Oct. 1] tracking poll registered the winner in the popular vote (including Al Gore in 2000), eleven of twelve times." Usually the race narrows somewhat at the end, but "in six of th[o]se elections--1960, 1964, 1976, 1984, 1988 and 2000--the final margin was different from the Oct. 1 polling results by less than three percentage points."

Which is why Obamans should be heartened by the latest stats from Gallup: Obama 50, McCain 42. On Election Day, the Bradley Effect--overstated support for black candidates--may cost Obama two or three points at the polls. Undersampled cell-phone voters and increased black and youth turnout may boost him by the same amount--or more. But either way, the fact remains: Obama merely needs to maintain altitude between now and Nov. 4. McCain needs to bring him down.

UPDATE, Oct. 1: The RCP map has shifted yet again. Thanks to new polls from Quinnipiac showing Obama ahead in Florida and Ohio by the shocking margins of 51-43 and 50-42, respectively, the Illinois senator now holds average polling leads in both Bush states, giving him an additional 48 electoral votes. Here's the new RCP landscape:

Does this mean Obama will win Florida and Ohio? Not at all. These polls could be outliers; things could change. And as Gawker's Peter Feld notes, much of "McCain's [national] support [has] gone... to undecided, not to Obama. With Barack at just around 50, there is still — barely — room for McCain to bounce back." That said, the new Quinnipiac stats do show that the Illinois senator is well-positioned to compete for the two most important electoral prizes. Which underscores the key dynamic of the current map: right now, Obama simply has far more paths to 270 than McCain.
 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

IN BAILOUT VOTE, A LEADERSHIP BREAKDOWN
(Jackie Calmes, New York Times)
The collapse of the proposed rescue plan for the teetering financial system was the product of a larger failure — of political leadership in Washington — at a moment when the world was looking to the United States to contain the cascading economic crisis. From the White House to Congress to the presidential campaign trail, the principal players did not rally the votes they needed in the House. They appeared not to comprehend or address in a convincing way an intense strain of opposition to the deal among voters. They allowed partisan politics to flare at sensitive moments... While there were lawmakers who opposed the package on the merits, with Election Day just five weeks away, substantial numbers decided that to favor the bill would be to imperil their own political futures. And once the vote was under way and so few Republicans were voting aye, Democrats were disinclined to force more of their members to help pass the unpopular plan.

AN APPEAL AND A BLAME GAME
(Michael D. Shear and Dan Balz)
Reacting to the House's defeat of a $700 billion economic rescue proposal Monday, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain called on Congress to pass a new bill and then sought to blame each other for the deadlock on Capitol Hill. McCain found himself in a particularly awkward position after bragging about his role in building a coalition behind the rescue package yesterday morning -- hours before it was defeated... The repercussions for the presidential campaign are uncertain and potentially dramatic as both candidates search for the right way to navigate the most severe economic crisis in decades just five weeks before Election Day. Aides in both camps said the candidates immediately called Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and others, but neither McCain nor Obama announced plans to return to Washington... Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, said McCain would feel the fallout over the House's rejection of the measure far more than Obama. "There's nothing worse than prematurely claiming victory and then finding you've been handed a defeat," Baker said. "It's a sign of the impulsiveness that he's often been accused of." McCain's political situation is complicated by disarray in the Republican Party. The split between Senate Republicans and President Bush, both of whom supported the plan, and House Republicans, who largely opposed it, make McCain's effort at trying to show leadership over his party all the more difficult.

REVOLT OF THE NIHILISTS
(David Brooks, New York Times)
The 228 who voted no... did the momentarily popular thing, and if the country slides into a deep recession, they will have the time and leisure to watch public opinion shift against them. House Republicans led the way and will get most of the blame. It has been interesting to watch them on their single-minded mission to destroy the Republican Party. Not long ago, they led an anti-immigration crusade that drove away Hispanic support. Then, too, they listened to the loudest and angriest voices in their party, oblivious to the complicated anxieties that lurk in most American minds. Now they have once again confused talk radio with reality. If this economy slides, they will go down in history as the Smoot-Hawleys of the 21st century. With this vote, they’ve taken responsibility for this economy, and they will be held accountable. The short-term blows will fall on John McCain, the long-term stress on the existence of the G.O.P. as we know it. I’ve spoken with several House Republicans over the past few days and most admirably believe in free-market principles. What’s sad is that they still think it’s 1984. They still think the biggest threat comes from socialism and Walter Mondale liberalism. They seem not to have noticed how global capital flows have transformed our political economy.

A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE (WHAT WE HAVE HERE)
(Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic)
This was and wasn't a partisan failure. Majority Leader Hoyer and Finance Committee chairman Frank, and Minority Leader Boehner were statesmanlike before the vote. Speaker Pelosi gave a partisan speech at the wrong time; it's indeed possible that it cost her 15 votes. Still, if those Republicans had been of stronger backbones and more nimble minds -- and more mature than Pelosi, who, let's call it, gave a relatively tame, generic partisan speech -- the bill would have passed. Those Republicans were looking for an excuse, and Pelosi gave it to them. It shouldn't matter what Pelosi says; the future of the Republican was at stake... Neither presidential candidate took a firm position, although one of the candidates riskily suspended his campaign and intervened, without intervening.  That intervention failed; he is now blaming his opponent and Nancy Pelosi via a spokesman and bemoaning the gridlock in Washington with his own lips. Neither candidate really explained the trade-offs to the American people.  There was something pernicious, in a way, in both candidates' failure to answer Jim Lehrer's simple question: what will the trade-offs be in January? What, of all the things you've promised, will you not be able to accomplish? As president, both candidates will rely on the power of the bully pulplit to rally the country, and yet neither candidate has distinguished themselves during the worst financial crisis in the country's recent history.

TO SAVE CAPITALISM
(Rich Lowry, National Review)
What now? If nothing passes and a crash comes, Republicans risk getting tagged for the blame for a long time to come. The vote is a blow to John McCain, who had so dramatically “suspended” his campaign to return to DC and broker a deal. His campaign had explained his role as bringing to the table and coaxing along House Republicans, whose revolt now makes him look ineffectual. Yet the bill will likely be revived — and deserves to be. The phrase the “real” economy has become a hallmark of this debate, implicitly contrasted with the “fake” economy of the financial world. McCain talks of the honest laboring man as the strength of America. No doubt he is, but he wants to buy a house (which requires a mortgage), not pay for everything with cash (which requires credit cards), have a job (which requires a business that is very likely dependent on loans) and buy big-ticket consumer items he can’t pay for upfront (which requires car loans, etc.). Freeze up all those sources of credit, and economic life as we know it ends... Conservatives who make so much of their knowledge of the markets would ordinarily be the ones to point this out, but they have a blind spot for the market’s failures. The financial system is subject to periodic panics that, if left to work their course, will wreak economic havoc out of all proportion to reason. They take down good institutions along with the bad.

CELEBRATING THE BAILOUT BILL'S FAILURE--AND LOOKING AHEAD
(David Cay Johnston, New Republic)
Whether you favor the $700 billion bailout or not, the House vote today should make you cheer--loudly. Why? Because the majority vote against it shows that Washington is not entirely in the service of the political donor class, by which I mean Wall Street and the corporations who rely on it for their financing. These campaign donors, a narrow slice of America, have lobbied and donated their way into a system that stacks the economic rules in their favor. But faced with as many as 200 telephone calls against the bailout for every one in favor, a lot of House members decided to listen to their constituents today instead of their campaign donors. The GOP members voted overwhelmingly against the bill, while two-thirds of the Democrats favored it. Right now you can be sure that cajoling and arm twisting is underway in an effort to persuade 16 GOP members (or perhaps a dozen Republicans and a few Democrats) to vote the public largesse for Wall Street. None of this is to say that we need, or do not need, some government intervention in the markets. Rather it is to say that the administration has failed to make its case, instead assuming that just as with the war in Iraq and the Patriot Act, it could stampede Congress into thoughtless action and terrify the public into going along.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

Over at his new "Race to the Finish" blog, my NEWSWEEK colleague Howard Fineman explains why the bailout bill collapsed--and sees a light at the end of the tunnel. Take it away, Howard:

House Minority leader John Boehner (speaking) and other House GOP leaders said Speaker Nancy Pelosi's "partisan" speech spurred defeat of the bailout bill. (Photo: Susan Walsh / AP)

It was a demonstration of democracy at its finest-or worst-depending on your point of view.

Ain't democracy grand? Infuriating, yes. Unpredictable, yes. And grand. All the Washington powers that be and all the New York money men simply could not convince the House of Representatives-"the People's House"-to swallow the Paulson Plan.

What happened? Here are a few of the forces at work:

• A new generation of Republicans, coming of age since the advent of Ronald Reagan, refused to accept this vast expansion of federal power in the markets. The new GOP is in many ways a populist one, and not amenable to the wishes of Wall Street, and not eager to give more power to Washington.
• President George W. Bush has zero credibility, even-if not especially-with his own party. He used it up in selling the war on terror. He tried to sell this measure, and the more he worked on it, the more damage he did to its prospects of passage.
• There was a mismatch between the purpose of the plan, which is to get credit flowing again, and the language and numbers of the proposal: a $700 billion "bailout" of Wall Street. Voters never were convinced that they would get any money back, and they didn't like the idea of helping a herd of rich people. As a result, the measure-to the extent anyone understood it-was wildly unpopular with the most vocal of voters.
• Democrats had their own objections-a lack of tough measures against the big boys-and in any case were not about to be the only party to vote in favor of an unpopular measure.
• The measure drew only weak support from the presidential candidates, who have their own criteria. Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama was an eager participant in the sales job.
• The rush-job nature of the entire process did not help. Call it the Iraq effect. It seemed to Democrats and Republicans alike, that a colossal measure was being crammed down their throats.
• Good old-fashioned partisanship. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave an accusatory speech at the last minute that did not help; Republican leaders such as Newt Gingrich poured his own gasoline on the fire, by lashing out against the Bush administration's plan as biased "entirely in favor of the big banks and Wall Street."
  

Now what? Well, the measure could be resurrected in a day or two. Paulson and Hill leaders could expand the bill like an accordion to win votes, one by one, on both sides of the aisle (and it won't take that many). Conservative Republicans-the core group that defeated the bill-could come back with an alternative more to their philosophical liking.

Or Congress could punt-and put the question of what, if anything, to do about the credit crisis to the American public. That would mean a full discussion of the issue and the merits of various proposals, which the two parties have yet to really make.

Doing that would require the two presidential candidates to get specific-and get real.

In other words, more democracy.

READ THE REST HERE.
 

Be careful what you wish for, Senator. You just might get it.

Speaking at a rally in Columbus, Ohio this afternoon, Republican presidential nominee John McCain defended his controversial decision to "suspend" his campaign as an example of his action-packed leadership style. “Inaction was not an option,” McCain said. “I put my campaign on hold for a couple of days last week to fight for a rescue plan that puts you and your economic security and working families first. I fought for a plan that protected taxpayers. I went to Washington last week to make sure the taxpayers of Ohio and across this great country were not left footing the bill." 

"I’ll never be a president who sits on the sidelines when this country faces a crisis,” McCain added. “ I’ll never do it. I know many of you have noticed it’s not my style to simply phone it in."

Apparently no one told him what was happening in Washington as he spoke. At 1:46 p.m. this afternoon--after a weekend of marathon negotiations and a four-hour floor debate--the House of Representatives voted to reject the Bush Administration's $700 billion bipartisan compromise package meant to rescue the financial industry. The measure needed 218 votes. It came up 13 votes short--228 to 205. The problem? A handful of the seventy-five House Republicans who had agreed to support the bill backed out at the last minute. On Wall Street, where traders were watching C-SPAN, the Dow Jones instantly fell more than 600 points.

McCain says his "suspension" was meant to help the country. Critics say it was meant to help his campaign. It now seems that he's failed by either standard.

When McCain landed in Washington Thursday morning--more than 24 hours after announcing that he had put his campaign on hold--there was a preliminary bipartisan agreement on the table. It was far from final, but it appeared to be moving along well. In fact, on Wednesday night, House Minority Leader John Boehner and Speaker Nancy Pelosi had even issued a joint statement declaring progress. But McCain's presence politicized the proceedings, and dissatisfied House Republicans used his involvement as a pretext to raise the volume of their objections. By the time McCain arrived at the White House for a key meeting with President Bush and Barack Obama, the House GOP was in full revolt. But McCain remained mostly silent. For the rest of the day, he "rarely came close to the Capitol suites and committee rooms where the talks were taking place." By 10:30 that night, negotiations had imploded.

But despite promising to boycott the debate unless Congress reached a “consensus on legislation," McCain cited "significant progress" and skipped off to Oxford on Friday morning--even though "consensus" and "legislation" seemed more distant than when he suspended his campaign. Apparently, McCain was confident that everything would work out. When he returned Saturday to Washington, he didn't visit Capitol Hill, choosing instead (in the words of top aide Mark Salter) to "do what he needs to do by phone" from the campaign's Arlington headquarters. That night, as negotiators struck a deal, he dined at a four-star restaurant. On Sunday, chief McCain strategist Steve Schmidt confidently predicted on Meet the Press that McCain had "help[ed] bring all of the parties to the table, including the House Republicans, whose votes were needed to pass this." And McCain communications director Jill Hazelbaker told FOX News this morning that the deal would not have happened "without Senator McCain."

So much, it seems, for "not phoning it in." After a weekend of dial-tone diplomacy, two-thirds of House Republicans--the same people McCain claimed to have "brought to the table"--voted against the Bush Administration's bill. (Most were at-risk representatives seeking to cover their electoral derrieres.) Meanwhile, the Democrats--whom McCain immediately tried to blame, along with Obama--delivered more votes than they promised. McCain isn't the House GOP whip; it's not his job to keep members in line. But when the bipartisan bailout compromise was on the verge of passing, he tried to claim credit--even though he did little more than politicize and possibly prolong the proceedings. McCain wanted the plan to pass, and he wanted to be responsible. (Obama made no similar claims for himself.) So now that it's been defeated, doesn't McCain--by his own standards--deserve some of the blame? For the next few days, Democrats will hammer the Arizona senator--for failing to lead his party, for "gambling" with the nation's economy, for being "erratic."  Their attacks may hurt his campaign. But the more important question--as the plunging Dow illustrates--is whether the country has been hurt in the process.

I honestly don't know which one--campaign or country--McCain meant, in his heart of hearts, to "put first" with this maneuver. But at this point, neither seems to have benefited from his behavior.  

UPDATE, 4:59 p.m.: The Dow Jones industrials close 777.68 points lower on Monday--a 6.97 percent drop, the biggest loss since 2001. Which puts the stock market below where it was on President Bush's first day in office. Meanwhile, Republicans say that Pelosi's floor speech "poisoned the outcome." Was it unproductive? Absolutely. But hurt feelings don't entitle grown men and women to endanger the stability of the world's financial markets.

UPDATE, 5:37 p.m.: Reader M.M. notes that "McCain tried, but his part is the minority. Obama’s party is in the majority. He could have used his influence to get the bill passed." It's not quite that simple. I'll pass the mic to Ambinder to explain: "For one thing, a lot of House Dems aren't thrilled with the bailout, and they need political cover from Republicans. It's an iron-clad rule of legislative politics: something this big and this risky can't go through without bipartisan support -- which is basically bipartisan CYA.  So the more House Republicans make noise, the more nervous House Democrats will be." In other words, the Democrats and Republicans made a deal before the vote to deliver a certain number of votes each. The Democrats made good on their part of the bargain; the Republicans didn't. Obama's not the issue.

The public, by the way, isn't quite opposed to the bill--whatever its merits (or lack thereof). According to today's Rasmussen poll, 33 percent of likely voters now favor the plan; 32 percent are opposed and 35 percent aren't sure. It's hardly popular, which is why at-risk pols are reluctant to vote for it. But it's not necessarily poison, either.

UPDATE, 6:06 p.m.: Landing in Iowa, McCain claims its not the the time to "affix...blame"--then promptly points his finger at Obama. "Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process," he says. Delightful.

It's all about expectations. 

On Friday night, I wrote that "John McCain was the more effective combatant" in this year's inaugural presidential debate. A lot of commenters disagreed--some respectfully, some not so respectfully. As evidence, many cited a pair of instapolls released after the clash. CNN showed Obama winning 51 percent to 38 percent among all viewers; CBS gave him a 39-25 edge among undecideds. "As the results of the polls of THE PEOPLE showed, your conclusion that McCain won the debate... is condescending," wrote reader S.K. "You imply that the American people were too stupid to follow the logic and sophistication of Sen Obama's carefully thought out answers."

I stand by my conclusion about McCain's solid performance. My point Friday wasn't that Americans are too dumb to understand Obama's nuanced arguments. It was that by relentlessly steering the conversation to his areas of strength, McCain "did more to reinforce his message--I'm a tough leader who will cut waste and get Iraq right--than his opponent." Jay Cost over at Real Clear Politics said it best: "Obama showed up to debate. McCain showed up to say what he wanted. This meant that Obama was left debating on McCain's best topics, but McCain hardly ever debated on Obama's best topics." At first blush, I assumed this strategic advantage would help McCain "win over" more swing voters and therefore "win" the debate--despite the way he "scowled, smirked and refused to look at his rival, conveying an air of condescension that could turn off some undecideds." But after a weekend of reflection--and a harder look at some more reliable poll numbers--I think it was Obama, not McCain, who did the most to help himself in Mississippi.

The reason? Expectations--or, more specifically, the vast differences between my expectations and the expectations of a casual, low-information voter who has yet to choose between the candidates. As an associate editor and political blogger at NEWSWEEK, I've been following McCain and Obama for more than a year. I've seen each candidate speak in person on a dozen occasions. I analyze their every maneuver. But the most relevant viewers for Friday night's debate were nothing like me. They don't read blogs. They hadn't watched any of the 30 or so primary debates. And they'd probably never seen Obama or McCain speak, whether in person or on TV. For tens of millions of people, Friday was their first actual exposure to this year's crop of candidates.

My expectations for Obama were relatively realistic. I know from personal experience that he's a sensible, rational, confident member of the American political mainstream. But many casual voters, as the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder notes, probably expected to see someone a bit more radical on stage. "Think of the 'bitter' comment, his middle name, the flag pin, the Chicago connections," he notes. "Low information voters wouldn't be out of line if they had a pretty strong impression of Obama formed by these attributes." So what ended up happening, I think, is that I took the most important information conveyed on screen--that Obama is NOT a radical--for granted. I already knew that Obama would come off as smart, sober, congenial and unthreatening. But a lot of voters--many of them eminently swingable--did not. And they were duly impressed when he did. "This weird racial/ideological caricature was priced into our (campaigns, media) debate expectations," writes Ambinder. "Obama coming off as a sensible, middle of the road senator actually did him a world of good as far as the reassurance of sensibility."

The proof is in the pudding. According to a Bloomberg News/Los Angeles Times poll released Sunday, 44 percent of uncommitted viewers said Obama looked more presidential than McCain. Only 16 percent gave the Arizonan an advantage. The fact is, most voters assumed that McCain--an older, more familiar face--was "presidential" coming into the debate. He could only disappoint. Obama--or at least the mythical "Ayers-Wright Chicago Elite Radical" Obama--had a much lower bar to clear. And he cleared it with ease. This may not have surprised me, but it did surprise the people--i.e., swing voters--who actually matter.

Needless to say, this revelation doesn't bode well for McCain's campaign. It's not that McCain performed poorly on Friday. Much the opposite--it was as strong a showing as I've ever seen from him. Sure, committed Obamans will obsess over McCain's smirks, his "condescension" and his lack of eye contact, and compare him, as one particularly combative reader did, to a "100-year-old retard." But these people are irrelevant; they were voting for Obama before the debate and they're still voting for him after. Among swing voters, it's unlikely that McCain did himself any real damage. No undecided will break for Obama because McCain seemed disdainful. In fact, the Bloomberg/L.A. Times poll cited above shows that among viewers who changed their mind about whether the candidates have "the right experience to be president," the net swing toward McCain (+6 percent) was larger than the swing toward Obama (+0 percent)--which lends credence to my "more effective messaging" argument. The problem for McCain is that the debate was less about his message than Obama's image--especially among low-information swing voters. Before, McCain was hoping to convince this crucial swath of the electorate that his rival is a dangerous, radical neophyte. But Friday's face-off showed how easily they'll dismiss this caricature once they actually see Obama speak. On issue after issue, McCain said Obama "didn't understand." But on issue after issue, Obama sounded credibly presidential. If that's the dominant dynamic from now until November, McCain's going to have a tough time coming from behind on Election Day--no matter how many debates he "wins" among hacks like me.
 

In an item last Thursday about Sarah Palin's increasingly incoherent interview performances, I suggested that John McCain had mishandled his vice-presidential nominee. My take:

Palin is an unknown quantity--and by sequestering her from the press and the public, the McCain campaign seems determined to keep her that way. The result of restricting her public remarks like this, however, is that it ratchets up the importance of the few unscripted things she does say. So relatively minor errors on Russia and regulation end up attracting an outsize amount of scrutiny--and possibly reinforcing the impression that Palin is "uninformed" or "unsteady." People interested in how she performs in the presidential pressure-cooker--without a script--have only these meager scraps to go on... [The public] want[s] to see Palin show her stuff--and I have no doubt she could. But by bottling her up, McCain and Co. risk letting her gaffes define her.

Now it seems some important pro-Palin people agree. Today on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney--usually a robotically on-message surrogate for McCain--veered off the talking points to second-guess the nominee's decision to keep Palin under lock and key. "Holding Sarah Palin to just three interviews and microscopically focusing on each interview I think has been a mistake," Romney said. "I think they'd be a lot wiser to let Sarah Palin be Sarah Palin. Let her talk to the media, let her talk to people." Over at the New York Times, influential conservative columnist William Kristol agrees. "McCain needs to liberate his running mate from the former Bush aides brought in to handle her — aides who seem to have succeeded in importing to the Palin campaign the trademark defensive crouch of the Bush White House," he writes this morning. "McCain picked Sarah Palin in part because she’s a talented politician and communicator. He needs to free her to use her political talents and to communicate in her own voice." Kristol reports that McCain himself "recently expressed unhappiness with his staff’s handling of Palin" and, as a result, has "dispatched his top aides Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis" to "liberate" her.

The Kristol storyline--that the valorous McCain is now freeing poor Palin from the evil Bushies--is transparently self-serving spin. It was the campaign's brain trust of Schmidt and Davis that made the strategic decision to shelter Palin from the press and the public; their underlings--including, yes, some former Bush staffers--were merely carrying out orders by keeping her sequestered. Bush may deserve the blame for a lot of things, but Palin isn't one of them. That said, the mere fact that Kristol's sources in the campaign are suddenly pointing fingers proves that Team McCain considers its "Plan to Protect Palin" a mistake. Here's hoping, then, that the new, "liberated" nominee goes beyond casting herself as "a combative conservative" in Thursday's vice-presidential debate"--Kristol's prediction--and actually submits to the same sort of back-and-forth with the media and the masses that Barack Obama, Joe Biden and John McCain have had to endure. At this point, it's as much in her interest as it is in ours.
 

In the latest dead-tree NEWSWEEK, my colleague Jonathan Darman pens a letter to his generation. The message: "despite all the enthusiasm for Obama, you, his young supporters, have done little to ensure he'll be the kind of transformative leader you long for. Your biggest failure: you've hardly asked Obama for a thing." Actually, Darman's generation is my generation, too: he's 27; I'm 26. His essay is a smart, substantive, well-reasoned argument for why young voters--who will play a large part in any Obama win--should require more from the Illinois senator on the entitlement crisis, the national debt, global trade and climate change. I doubt any of this will happen, of course. But Darman raises an important topic for debate: if young voters fulfill their promise and actually make a difference at the polls, why shouldn't they ask for a return on their investment? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Key excerpts: 

(Jim R. Bounds / AP) 

No generation of young people, except maybe the radicalized '60s youth, has ever organized as an interest group. The problem is, on his long road to the White House, Obama has met plenty of groups who do want something from him. He has encountered senior citizens who worry about what he'll do to their Social Security checks, union members who worry he'll trade away their jobs and small businessmen who worry he'll tax them into oblivion. These people are not as enamored of him as you are and have made it clear that he has to work for their vote. He's taken their challenge, making promises to each of these old interest groups that, in the White House, he'll look out for them...

Get selfish before it's too late... If you really want to be the change you've been waiting for, start holding Obama to some of his promises to our generation. In these waning days of the campaign, ask not what you can do for Barack Obama, ask what Barack Obama can do for you.

Of course, asking is easier said than done. What exactly should you ask Obama for?

The most predictable request, and a suitable one for our earnest generation, is for Obama to do something about the entitlement crisis. Many of you know how Armageddon is coming through simple math: the retirement of the baby-boom generation means the Social Security system will have to pay out more in benefits for retired workers than it is taking in from those still in the workforce. Politicians have long paid lip service to the coming crisis (Al Gore's "lockbox," President Bush's "ownership society"), but to date, none of them has achieved a solution. Under an Obama presidency, the crisis will be on our doorstep.

In the early stages of his campaign, Obama seemed genuinely interested in addressing this problem, proposing to cover the Social Security shortfall by raising the payroll tax on high earners. In recent weeks, though, his advisers have significantly scaled back this proposal. The momentum of the modern presidency suggests that the appropriate time for a president to dare to touch the "third rail," the first year of a second administration, may be many political lifetimes away for either Obama or McCain.

The new financial crisis, however, presents a Democratic president with a unique opportunity on entitlements. Historically, Republicans have started any conversation about Social Security with a demand for partial privatization of the program. The failure of President Bush's Social Security plan, however, combined with volatility in the markets, may well lead many Republicans to conclude they cannot sell privatization politically. A concerted effort by Obama to attract attention to the problem could force Republicans to find new solutions—say, through means testing or raising the retirement age.

More immediate: ask Obama to level with our generation about the national debt. In September the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the next president will inherit a deficit of $500 billion—a record number that does not include the cost of a bailout of Wall Street. To be clear, this is debt that will be paid by our generation. Servicing the deficit will be harder for us than it was for our parents since our creditors in the world at large have less confidence in the fundamentals of our economy and our ability to pay off our debts in the long run.

Obama's economic advisers have said they are convinced that, even in light of the current financial crisis, they can address the deficit and grow the economy all while keeping the tax burden off the middle class. Many of these advisers are veterans of the Clinton administration and thus have credibility when they make such a promise. But they have no such credibility in promising they can do all these things while investing in our future. During the past 30 years, neither party has any record of spending money, outside of defense, with benefits that accrued primarily to future generations. Rather, under Reagan, both Bushes and Clinton, the government's largesse, in times of deficit and times of surplus, was used to subsidize current consumption. Here, more than anywhere, is where government has failed to deliver for our generation. It has not been a question of ideology or a question of how to do the math. It is simply a moral failure. Now is the time to ask Obama to treat you more honorably than presidents who came before.

This will no doubt prove an uncomfortable request for some of you, who know nothing kills a Democratic candidate like honest talk about taxes. Perhaps, then, you will make an arguably less dangerous, but certainly no less dramatic, request: make the case for global trade. Those of us blessed with many years ahead of us will see China, India, Brazil and Russia equal (or better) America's economic strength. Our survival in this new world will depend on our ability to be a nimble player in the global marketplace. Through nudges and winks from Obama's friends and advisers, one gets the sense that the candidate understands this reality. But during the course of the campaign, his language on trade has devolved into protectionist Democratic boilerplate. Is it too much to expect Obama to acknowledge the global reality of the future?

Perhaps most important, ask Obama to level with the nation about what seriously addressing climate change will require. Clearly the candidate's heart is in the right place; he and the Democratic leadership have said global warming will be a top priority. A realistic policy solution on carbon emissions, however, will require the next president to pull off three masterful feats: a public-information campaign to create political support, a grand congressional bargain and a muscular global agreement that includes emerging powers. Obama has not spent this campaign preparing the electorate for the notion that this problem will require a major sacrifice to cover the transitional costs of a new energy economy. He could help himself by admitting that a viable fix requires more than just biofuels, green-collar jobs and Al Gore.

I do not mean to suggest that asking questions of Obama will help him get elected. Some of them will probably hurt his chances. An Obama defeat is an outcome many of you cannot fathom and most of you would like to avoid. But if our generation fails to