The Note: The Wreckage

Sept. 30, 2008— -- Can you blame these guys for wanting to get out of that building?

As we watch the stock market try to whip votes in Congress in a way not even a president, two presidential candidates, and the united bipartisan, bicameral leadership could not, everyone looks bad, but some people look more bad than others.

That second list would include, say, those who have lagged when the talk has turn to the economy; those whose party's votes largely sank the bill; those who staked their campaigns to getting a workable solution through Congress; and those who celebrated the measure's passage only slightly prematurely.

Sometimes, gambles fail: "Republican John McCain has maneuvered himself into a political dead end and has five weeks to find his way out," the AP's Steven Hurst writes. "All in all, McCain might have been better served by staying out of the mess and above the fray."

Sen. Barack Obama hardly emerges as a profile in courage; aides couldn't point to a single phone call he made to an on-the-fence lawmaker, and there's the little matter of his own advance text applauding the deal that never was.

(Obama is first out of the box, though, with a new idea Tuesday -- expanding FDIC insurance to help small businesses. And President Bush -- never looking less relevant than he does at this moment -- seeks to calm the markets with 8:45 am ET remarks at the White House.)

(Plus -- the RNC fires back with a quick-out-of-the-box "independent expenditure" ad that probably doesn't make compromise any easier: "Meltdown: Wall Street squanders our money, and Washington is forced to bail them out with -- you guessed it -- our money. Under Barack Obama's plan, the government would spend a trillion dollars more, even after the bailout." A Republican official tells ABC the ad is running in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and -- here's a first for the cycle -- Indiana.)

Still, McCain had and still has more on the line -- and would be in the same situation if his only goal was shifting the debate away from the economy, rather than salvaging his political reputation at the same time.

"As a study in his prospective leadership, the role of Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, has done him no political good," Jackie Calmes writes in The New York Times. "He implicitly took credit for the compromise bailout that Congressional leaders had negotiated over the weekend, even as it was going down to defeat."

"Mr. Obama, campaigning in Colorado, also was taken by surprise," Calmes continues. "He quickly revised his speech, which announced the bipartisan agreement, to instead call for Congress to 'step up to the plate and get this done.' While Mr. Obama had tepidly endorsed the plan and kept in daily touch with Mr. Paulson and Congressional leaders, aides said he did not twist Democrats' arms to support it."

Cue the finger-pointing: "Barack Obama and John McCain seem to agree on two things about the economic crisis. One let's not blame each other," ABC's John Berman reported on "Good Morning America" Tuesday. "And two, let's blame each other."

Obama adviser Robert Gibbs says Obama will step up his pressure on rank-and-file lawmakers: "We're going to work on that more and more today," he said on "Good Morning Ameirca."

Countered McCain adviser Nicolle Wallace: "The bill failed yesterday. Maybe they don't have Internet connections or phones on their big fancy plane." (Where's that storyline been, anyway?)

The failed vote was a failure of leadership, a historic misreading of the country's mood -- and it came after a clanker of a move by a presidential candidate who is still looking for a way to make economic issues his own.

A bad bet: "McCain invested more political capital than anyone else in a deal that went bad," CQ's Jonathan Allen writes. "After the bailout bill fell apart, McCain was left with little room to argue he had helped the process. So, he fired a few partisan shots."

Team McCain, in the aftermath: "This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country," said McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, per ABC's John Berman and Ron Claiborne.

But didn't the bill also fail because Republicans voted by a 2-1 margin against their president, their presidential candidate, and their leadership? And here's just guessing that a Nancy Pelosi speech had slightly less to do with the vote's outcome than the fact that 435 House members are on the ballot five weeks from today.

(How many years does McCain need to be in Congress before he learns how the place works -- and that you better accomplish your mission before declaring that you did so?)

"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," Politico's Mike Allen writes. "The rush to claim he had engineered a victory now looks like a strategic blunder that will prolong the McCain's campaign's difficulty in finding a winning message on the economy."

"About an hour before the Wall Street bailout package collapsed yesterday in the U.S. House, Sen. John McCain trumpeted his role in building a coalition to fight for the economic rescue plan," Joe Hallett writes for the Columbus Dispatch.

"So if McCain wanted credit for passage, should he share some of the blame for its defeat?" Marc Ambinder blogs for The Atlantic. "Two thirds of half Republicans voted for its defeat . . . after a weekend of telephone call diplomacy from McCain."

"The house always wins, gamblers are warned," per the AP's Chuck Babington. "By his own actions last week, McCain tied himself far more tightly to the failed bill than did his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama."

"The vote is a blow to John McCain, who had so dramatically 'suspended' his campaign to return to DC and broker a deal," National Review's Rich Lowry writes. "His campaign had explained his role as bringing to the table and coaxing along House Republicans, whose revolt now makes him look ineffectual."

From here, per ABC's George Stephanopoulos, congressional leaders are considering four options for when Congress reconvenes after Rosh Hashanah: Hope the markets change minds and try again in the House; let the Senate vote first to build momentum for the package; make some changes that are popular on the right, like extending FDIC insurance and suspending the mark-to-market rule; or tacking left with the bill to add Democratic votes.