Louisville Courier Journal Editorial: John McCain's "Hollow Grandstanding".

McCain's follies

John McCain is rapidly degenerating into a parody of himself. It would be funny if the stakes weren't so high.
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Consider his recent march through the thicket created by the Wall Street financial crisis.

First, the background: Sen. McCain's entire political history is as an ardent foe of government regulation and advocate of free markets. He has repeatedly tried to win the affections of Republican audiences by describing his political origins as a "foot soldier in the Reagan revolution," which now stands as arguably the most discredited major American political movement of the last century.

Now, fast forward to the past week. He started off by verifying past confessions that he doesn't know much about economics by declaring that the economy is fundamentally strong. When that turned out to be the biggest gaffe of the campaign, he changed that tune to a warning that the economy is "about to crater" and that Congress needs to intervene in the banking and mortgage markets with immediate bailout legislation.

So much for principled consistency.

Worse, from a standpoint of leadership, Sen. McCain took the position that he was the indispensable person.

He ignored an appropriately low-key, personal approach from Sen. Barack Obama that the two candidates present a united front with a joint statement, and instead leapt before television cameras to declare that he was suspending his campaign to head back to Washington. The republic could breathe easier.

It was all hollow grandstanding, of course. Before flying to Washington, he sat down at CBS for an interview with Katie Couric and gave a speech in New York.

So much for honor.

Fortunately, congressional negotiations on the bailout bill seemed to make progress yesterday without him, since an injection of presidential politics likely would delay things.

In any case, effective intercession by Sen. McCain was off the table. As The New Republic reported, he acknowledged Tuesday that he hadn't even read Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's bailout proposal, which had been made public four days earlier and totaled all of three pages.

So much for competence.

But for "Saturday Night Live," the script is ready.

Editor's comment: This is NOT the John McCain we've known and loved!