Presidential Poker

It turns out that experiencing an economic crisis in the stretch run of a presidential campaign is not serendipitous timing. At 9 p.m. tonight, President Bush gave a somber and sobering Address to the Nation. All the networks carried it live, an ominous sign in itself, which made one think, yes, this crisis must be real. And who even remembered that George W. Bush was still president? Listening to POTUS’s speech, it seemed to this non-economics major that in his eighth year in office, Forty-Three has truly learned how to be a chief executive. Exactly how much the bank bailout plan he floated last Friday should be tweaked by Congress is not for me to say. But his speech was clear and straightforward. Meanwhile, others didn’t behave as, well…as… presidential as Bush, though I’m sure they were trying their best.

A bit of background: On Tuesday night, Senator Tom Coburn, a conservative Oklahoma Republican who has regard for John McCain and Barack Obama, called both candidates and asked them to set aside campaign trail politics and come back to Washington and help Congress and the White House deal with the current economic crisis. They agreed, although their subsequent attempts at bipartisanship proved about as harmonized as Richard Nixon at a rap concert.

As it happens, after the two candidates spoke this morning on the phone about issuing some kind of joint statement on the economy, McCain jumped the gun—and raised the ante—by announcing (without telling Obama) that he was “suspending” his campaign and returning to Washington. Johnny Mac also tossed off a line about possibly postponing Friday’s scheduled debate with Obama in Oxford, Miss., an event that has been planned for more than a year. Perhaps reeling from a morning Washington Post/ABC poll showing him trailing Obama nationally by 9 points McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin, also invoked the word “Depression.”

Many Democrats have spoken this way during most of Bush’s second term, irresponsibly in my view, and long before any of the macro-economic numbers justified such talk. Well, hard questions should be asked now of McCain. Here’s one: Is scaring the bejesus out of the citizenry for a tactical political advantage really a responsible thing to do? (“Recession” is the word the president used.)

For his part, Obama clearly wants to go through with Friday’s debate. By way of explanation, the Illinois senator kept repeating words to the effect that a presidential candidate ought to be able to chew gum and walk at the same time. In other words, solve the greatest economic crisis in 40 years on Thursday, and debate on Friday. It wasn’t an entirely convincing argument, as Obama never really explained why this debate had to happen this Friday. (And, remember, the first debate was supposed to be about foreign policy, not the economy.) Obama came across a bit like the good Harvard student (that he once was) who’d crammed for a test—and, by God, he wants to take it. Still, Obama, always a cool cat, didn’t act as shook up as McCain. He instilled a bit more confidence. He looked presidential.

Which is more than can be said for his Democratic surrogates. Reading, apparently, from the exact same set of talking points, senators such as Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Harry Reid of Nevada, excoriated McCain for “playing presidential politics” with the economy. Shocked, shocked, they were. The most hysterical, or maybe intemperate is a better word, was Senator Chuck Schumer of New York. McCain’s strategy, said Schumer, was “odd, just weird…a strange political stunt.”

“The last thing we need is an injection of presidential politics” into the economic bailout discussions, Schumer added. Actually, what seems odd and strange and weird to me is how the nation's cable news networks constantly let politicians regurgitate partisan talking points as though they reflected actual thought. Wolf Blitzer, the CNN anchor who invited Schumer to launch this broadside against McCain, didn’t interject with the obvious question: How could Congress and the White House even consider legislation this major without input from the next president of the United States? If Wolf had asked that question, he might have gotten an interesting answer: Bush had invited both Obama and McCain to come to Washington on Thursday for just that purpose. Which summed up the problem with the whole day. All these talking heads, the candidates included, would have been better served to let Bush speak first, and then respond.

For better or worse, we only have one president at a time. Today’s events showed why that’s a necessary thing.