Lead, Don't Act

No more talk about whether it'll be a one-man show or the two needed to tango in Mississippi tonight. Why was the fate of America's free market credit system now being held hostage by a television show in the first place?

McCain now says he's OK to go to the University of Mississippi even thought there isn't something to vote on back in Washington; he and Obama both went to the White House yesterday and the spin started the minute they walked out of the conference room.

Why not join the club?

Today's Politico entry has Obama hitting the gym before heading down to the office and then, we presume, to Mississippi for the debate. McCain is getting blasted for stopping the bailout that, polls show, most Americans aren't buying into but late this morning he announced he would be Ole Miss bound.

The debate is on.

What a bizarre situation: pretty much the same gaggle of politicians that didn't probe harder in the decision leading up to war are now being assailed for standing fast and not swallowing the bailout from the President just about everyone has little confidence in?

I found McCain's original argument -- that the job of a U.S. Senator was to be in the Senate during a time of crisis, doing his or her job -- right on the mark. My gut reaction was that a debate could be held anywhere; if necessary they could even stick the two of 'em in a Capitol Hill studio (the Senate has 'em) and let them talk and bloviate without an audience.

Unfortunately, that isn't good enough for the complicated patchwork of special interests really driving the debate.

The TV networks were having a cow; after all, pushing the debate into next week might interfere with the broadcast schedules of the baseball playoffs. Geez, can't have baseball interrupted by an election campaign that's already gone 18 months, can we?

The networks already had their big stars either sitting in Mississippi or booked to travel there, and we wouldn't want to inconvenience Brian, Katie, Charlie, Wolf and Shep if they had to turn around and try to get a hotel room in Washington instead.

After all, it's not really about the democracy, or Senators pretending to be Presidents still doing their jobs as lawmakers instead of candidates -- it's about the prime-time lineup schedule. You saw some of that from David Letterman last night when he capped McCain for daring to pick a trip to Washington over eight minutes in New York.

For my money (and yours, too) I think both sides blew the opportunity to actually BE Presidential rather than just TALK Presidential. Show me you've got the guts to act like you have to clean up this mess; show us the leadership in bringing the warring sides together to fix the credit crunch on Wall Street while still representing Main Street; the time to show you are worthy of the job is to actually do the job with sleeves rolled up, not lips flapping.

From both, we get failure. Both say they can unite yet neither showed any ability the past 48 hours to prove they can create bridges leading to solutions. What the taxpayers got was another bridge to nowhere.