I missed this yesterday, somehow:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked.
Shortly before the vote, McCain had bragged about his involvement and mocked Sen. Barack Obama for staying on the sidelines.
“I’ve never been afraid of stepping in to solve problems for the American people, and I’m not going to stop now,” McCain told a rally in Columbus, Ohio. “Sen. Obama took a very different approach to the crisis our country faced. At first he didn’t want to get involved. Then he was monitoring the situation.”
McCain, grinning, flashed a sarcastic thumbs up.“That’s not leadership. That’s watching from the sidelines,” he added to cheers and applause.
John McCain, a few hours later when the bailout failed:
“Sen. Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process. Now is not the time to fix the blame. It’s time to fix the problem,” McCain said in a hastily called statement to the press here today.
Heads I win! Tails, you lose! And that last quote is actually a twofer, because McCain claims this is no time to be fixing blame… while blaming Obama.
Now, I understand most of us are cynical about politicians, and I understand that politicians are opportunistic, but aren’t they usually a little more subtle than this? I mean, can’t you at least try to not be blatantly full of it?
Or has McCain just given up?