Time Out?

The right isn't wild about McCain's move, either. Let's hang out on National Review's Corner. Ramesh Ponnuru:

"I think McCain's decision reduces the likelihood that Congress will pass anything and the likelihood that McCain will win the election."

Kathryn Jean Lopez: "Obama may win this campaign moment yet. If McCain protests, he looks petty."

But Power Line's Paul Mirengoff dissents: "As a political matter, though, this seems like a good move. If Obama agrees, he's following McCain, not leading. Moreover, Obama seems to have 'momentum' on his side right now, so a 'time-out' might help McCain marginally.

"If Obama doesn't agree, he may be seen as unwilling to put 'country first.' And if a deal is negotiated (something I think most Americans would like to see, as a general matter), then McCain will receive credit and Obama won't."

Marc Ambinder's take: "The tough thing here for McCain is that nobody in Washington asked him to come back; nobody seems to need him to come back; and that Democrats simply do not trust John McCain's motives."

John Dickerson: "It's not clear what exactly McCain is going to do in Washington. He doesn't sit on any of the relevant committees and everyone is already deep in negotiations. Still, he's coming anyway. It doesn't make much logical sense. The only way to understand it is politically: In a presidential campaign, the surest sign that a candidate is playing politics on an issue is when he claims not to be playing politics on an issue. The only way for McCain to convince everyone that his intentions are 100 percent pure is for him to drop out of the race completely. A campaign doesn't end--and its distracting affects don't disappear--just because one candidate says so."

WP/ABC may have given Obama a 9-point lead, but the NBC/WSJ says Obama is ahead by just 48-46:

"One reason that Sen. McCain may remain competitive: The survey shows that voters have grown even angrier about the direction of country than they were over the summer, a sentiment that the Arizona lawmaker has appealed to with a passionate populist message. For more than a week, he has eviscerated Wall Street and Washington alike for the greed, corruption and incompetence he says lie behind the financial meltdown." (And LAT/Bloomberg has up Obama up 49-45.)

Meanwhile, Katie Couric stumped Sarah Palin yesterday, and I explore her continued avoidance of most media types here.

Usually, when we the media find a politician stretching the truth, the pol at least adjusts the language. But that hasn't always happened in this campaign, as Jonathan Chait points out:

"About a week after John McCain's campaign unveiled a vice-presidential nominee who incessantly boasted about her decision to turn down federal funding for a notoriously pointless bridge ('I told Congress "thanks, but no thanks" on that Bridge to Nowhere'), the press corps began to notice that Sarah Palin had, in fact, vigorously championed the project until it was no longer tenable. Political fibs, even brazen ones such as this, are hardly unprecedented. What happened next, though, was somewhat unusual. Despite having its claim exposed in nearly every media outlet, the McCain campaign continued to assert it anyway, day after day, dozens of times in all. It was as if Bill Clinton had persisted in his claim that he did not have sexual relations with that woman even after the appearance of the semen-stained dress.