The Note: RIP, Lipstick

Sept. 22, 2008— -- Like the last fans walking out of a now-abandoned Yankee Stadium, let's usher out the age of frivolity in the race.

Take the lipstick with you -- yes, even that tube you put on a pig. Pack up the arugula. Bubble-wrap the tanning bed. Paris and Britney -- you can resume your regularly scheduled places in the nation's consciousness.

From global finance to world crises, a high-stakes congressional debate and a (possibly) higher-stakes presidential one, the real world has now crashed into the political world. It's about time (since this is a presidential campaign and everything), but finally, this race is about who can be the best president.

This week will demand versatility: As the Hill grapples with the recovery package thrust in its lap, a debate on foreign policy looms Friday -- the last big scheduled game-changer on the calendar.

Watch the paradigms shift: "So far, the presidential race has focused extensively on the life stories of the two candidates and their running mates. The government bailout of Wall Street will shift the focus onto more grounded concerns -- both domestic and overseas, where increasing amounts of the American government's debts are being held in unfriendly nations," Peter Canellos writes in the Sunday Boston Globe.

"At such a time, considering whether a tanning bed was installed in the governor's mansion in Alaska amounts to holding a barbecue on the lip of the volcano," Anna Quindlen writes for Newsweek. "Maybe this campaign, which looked so promising, so dedicated to real issues and real change a year ago, can now get back on course."

"Once again it's about the economy, stupid -- and financial markets and how they are best regulated," Time's Michael Duffy writes. "That shift should benefit Democratic nominee Barack Obama for many reasons, as economics in difficult times rarely help Republicans. But this race has proven conventional wisdom wrong time and again. What seems more certain is this: though virtually no one was calling for it, a new era of big government has arrived."

"This could be the single-most important week for these candidates to sell themselves to voters as potentially good stewards of the economy -- and to attack each other," ABC's Jake Tapper reported on "Good Morning America" Monday.

The scope, per ABC's Martha Raddatz: "All together, a stunning number of taxpayer dollars are now at risk. More than double the entire cost of the Iraq war. More than the Pentagon, education, health and human services, agriculture and Homeland Security budgets combined."

Back on the trail -- who really wants this? It's a scenario that calls for bold leadership -- but might Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama be as confused and conflicted as the rest of us?

(Even if everyone can agree the bailout is necessary, no one can agree how this one will go over with voters who want bailouts of their own.)

"Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama traded fresh jabs Sunday but offered no new policy prescriptions to lead the nation out of its economic morass," Bob Drogin and Michael Finnegan write in the Los Angeles Times. "Both candidates have grown far more assertive in recent days in accusing the other of misguided economic policies -- and both have moved more cautiously in suggesting remedies to the fast-moving crisis."

"Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain are trying to influence the course of the Bush administration's Wall Street bailout plan as they prepare for their first debate this week," USA Today's David Jackson and Jill Lawrence write. "Congress is expected to vote on the administration bailout plan this week. Neither campaign would say if the candidates would interrupt their week to fly to Washington and vote, or how they might vote on a final plan."

Here come the candidates' caveats: "Republican John McCain complained that the plan gives too much power to the Treasury secretary, and Democrat Barack Obama cautioned that any final deal must offer protection to taxpayers and homeowners as well as to Wall Street," Robert Barnes and Dan Balz write in The Washington Post. "Both men offered a set of principles -- strikingly similar -- that the final agreement should contain."

How serious are they? "Neither candidate said the $700 billion bailout would stop their tax cuts or spending plans," Elizabeth Holmes and Laura Meckler write in The Wall Street Journal. "Asked whether he could still balance the budget in his first term, Sen. McCain said he could as long as spending is restrained. Sen. Obama said he would continue to press his domestic agenda as long as it is all paid for with offsetting cuts and tax increases."

"Mr. McCain said in an interview here with CNBC and The New York Times that he would press on with his plan to extend the Bush tax cuts and to cut others," John Harwood and Michael Cooper write in The New York Times. "Mr. McCain also stuck by his support for allowing workers to invest a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes in stocks and bonds, an approach that Democrats call privatization and that Mr. Obama has used to suggest Mr. McCain would subject retirees to excessive market risk."

(Who will be the first senator-who-would-be-president who heads back to Washington to help hammer out a deal?)

And yet -- two candidates who are trying to remake their parties could be brought back to reality by the fact that there are congressional elections looming, too.

On the Hill, where important bills rarely move quickly (if at all), the negotiations are fast turning into a legislative poker game -- plenty on the table, and the clock less important than winning the big pot.

"Congressional Democrats considering the Bush administration's emergency plan to shore up the U.S. financial system countered with their own demands yesterday, presenting draft legislation giving the government power to cut salaries of chief executives at firms that participate in the bailout and slash severance packages for their top management," Lori Montgomery and David Cho write in The Washington Post.

"We want to limit those [big payouts to executives] as a condition for giving them the aid. If the [Treasury] secretary would agree to that, we would move fairly quickly," House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., told ABC's Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America" Monday.

"Congressional Republicans, too, put the Bush administration on notice that they would not rubber-stamp the bailout proposal but would insist on a number of changes, including specific protections for taxpayers. Those would include a requirement that any profits from the program be returned to the Treasury," David M. Herszenhorn, Stephen Labaton and Mark Landler write in The New York Times.

"Democrats said they planned to consider the bailout proposal separately from an economic recovery program that would include new public works spending, aid to states and added unemployment and food-stamp benefits. Congress could consider that plan and a stop-gap funding plan for the federal government before taking up the Treasury proposal later in the week," they report.

This may not move as fast as some would like: "This is of such import that if it takes a little longer to get it right, so be it," Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., tells the Times.

The context: "The current generation of Democratic congressional leaders feels burned -- and not a little humiliated -- by the Bush administration's use of the 2001 attacks to justify both the speedy enactment of the controversial and complex USA Patriot Act and congressional authorization of the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq," Politico's Glenn Thrush writes.