What, me bailout?

If there’s one good thing to come out of Wall Street’s implosion, it’s the chance Americans have had to watch John McCain writhe through Bailout-mania in a desperate dance that’s equal parts contortionist and “get-it-off-me.” Having claimed, pre-vote, to have worked false-tooth-and-nail to hammer the $700-billion bailout’s bugs into shape, the vote’s failure left him looking like his bad judgment wasn’t just in running mates. McCain’s response? A TV campaign that attempts to absolve himself of blame and make Obama look like the reckless spender.

The morning after Washington took a temporary pass on dumping someone else’s bad business onto taxpayers, the RNC went to air with a TV campaign implying McCain was outraged at the prospect of having to force the American people to bail out the financial elite, and that Obama’s plan “would spend a trillion dollars more, even after the bailout.”

An Obama spokesman called McCain’s decision to “demagogue a rescue plan that he supports in order to score cheap political points is not only dishonest and dishonorable, it is the height of irresponsibility.”

by SCOTT SAXON