Once again John McCain has chosen chaos over constancy as his presidential campaign …

Oops, I forgot: McCain currently doesn’t have a presidential campaign. It’s been “suspended,” even as he swoops down on Washington to preen around and pretend to inject his “leadership” in the struggle to save our floundering economy. For months Republicans have been blowing smoke up our asses, claiming that Barack Obama is “presumptuous” for drawing huge crowds, holding substantive meetings with foreign leaders, driving around in motorcades … and for requesting briefings from Treasury secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. But what could be more presumptuous than McCain’s gambit to blow up the debate schedule so he can turn Congress’ bailout negotiations into a personal photo-op?

Let’s be brutally honest here: McCain has nothing to contribute to the actual negotiations between Congressional leaders and the current White House. Neither does Obama. Neither man sits on the relevant Senate committees, nor would either man be invited to sit on the Conference Committee that will attempt to reconcile differences between the House and Senate bills that eventually emerge. Today’s sit-down at the White House, for which McCain and George Bush conspired to pull Obama away from his scheduled activities, is mostly a dog-and-pony show; the real negotiations, if they’re not already wrapped up, will continue behind the scenes among staffers from Congress and the Treasury.

You’ve got to give McCain credit, though – he certainly knows how to make a splash. His grandiose display of “statesmanship” yesterday was a P.R. move, pure and simple, but it will probably work like a Pavlovian whistle among the small sliver of the electorate that sends poll numbers careening back and forth. What this says about those folks is another question. Why must the leadership of the free world hinge on a bunch of ninnies who are so easily distracted by shiny objects of no value (Sarah Palin) or offers of free (bi-partisan) joints from a guy who so clearly plans to get us strung out on the usual GOP heroin?

But I digress. There actually is one service McCain can provide in the current negotiations – that of pulling the wackiest of wacko conservatives back from the ledge, and convincing them to sign on to whatever compromise legislation emerges over the next few days. Unbelievably, there remains a core of House Republicans who would rather watch our banking system collapse than betray their conservative “principles” by allowing the government (horrors!) to do something about it. The Democratic leadership wisely has insisted that no bailout plan will come up for a vote without a critical mass of Republican support; McCain probably recognizes that unless such support coalesces, he and his party are likely to suffer such extraordinary losses in November that the party may never recover. (more…)