The New York Times profiled John McCain's penchant for gambling this weekend, and there actually were some serious elements to the story, including McCain buddying up with Indian casino lobbyists and giving them sweetheart deals, while punishing Jack Abramoff, who those lobbyists were competing with. It's a pretty damaging story, and the DNC jumped on it, in particular pushing this story in religious communities where gambling is frowned upon.
But today shows how McCain's gambling problem gets him into serious trouble. The guy who suspended his campaign to race back to Washington to save the economy, who then took credit for showing the leadership to get it passed, ended up bragging about passage before it ever happened.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked.
The rush to claim he had engineered a victory now looks like a strategic blunder that will prolong the McCain’s campaign’s difficulty in finding a winning message on the economy.
Shortly before the vote, McCain had bragged about his involvement and mocked Sen. Barack Obama for staying on the sidelines.
“I've never been afraid of stepping in to solve problems for the American people, and I'm not going to stop now,” McCain told a rally in Columbus, Ohio. “Sen. Obama took a very different approach to the crisis our country faced. At first he didn't want to get involved. Then he was monitoring the situation.”
McCain, grinning, flashed a sarcastic thumbs up.
“That's not leadership. That's watching from the sidelines,” he added to cheers and applause.
Of course, it's even worse than that. When he swooped in to the Capitol the deal started falling apart, and when he visited the White House he stood mute as the whole thing went to pot. He left to snarl at Barack Obama in the debate, and returned to Washington but holed up in his apartment. The "I'm suspending the campaign" gambit was a big bet that came up completely empty.
McCain just gave a statement blaming Obama and the Democrats for partisanship (that mean ol' Nancy!) and urged everybody to keep working. But if there was a major crisis last week, it's even bigger now, with the Dow crashing before our eyes. No suspending the campaign today? (UPDATE: Greg Sargent also notes that McCain's campaign delivered a pretty strong finger-pointing press release right before McCain said "now is not the time to assign blame.")
I'm less worried about McCain than I am about the future of an Obama presidency and the US economic mess. He gambled and lost, putting his personal ambition far above the country at large.
(as a side note, this bill needed to fail. It was a repudiation of the leadership of both parties in the House and the closest thing in our system to a no-confidence vote. The left and the right came together and said "Hell No" to the middle. The solution is to let America decide who's right and who's wrong, and use a popular mandate as the lever to push this through instead of insider secrecy.)