First, I detect a certain contempt, on your part, for the activity of campaigning for President of the United States. Does this mean that you equate it's being a slogging, mundane, and often absurd process with it's being somehow unimportant?

Next, of all the people who should keep their mouths shut about this, I would single out both McCain and Obama. (I think you have a point about Biden, since I doubt anyone would listen to the guy.) They are Senators (in name, at least, if not in actions), but one of them will, in fact, be the POTUS in a very short time. If this situation shows us anything, it's the childlike ignorance of market traders, those to whom we have foolishly, and unavoidably, entrusted the duty of managing our money. These folks regard panic as a useful and legitimate tool of high-finance. We shouldn't confuse them, any more than they already are, about who they should be listening to.

Actually, George, it's different than what you and Josh Marshall think about the current GOP behavior. They're rushing to bail out the financial institutions not only to help their friends, but to try to put out this economy-related “fire” so as to steal it effectively from Obama before it can harm McCain and the GOP more than it has already. That's a good deal of why there's such antagonism behind the global-warming-at-its-looniest insistence on rushing to act without any thinking or questioning what “must” be done immediately. (The rest of it comes from the farther left, that this is Bush-style driving similar to the buildup to war in Iraq, with which I disagree — Iraq was slower and less agitated.)

I wish they would just step back and let these institutions fail, as they should, reform themselves (i.e., the federal government) first, then approach the aftermath of the failures with a more learned and mature nature.

The Republican/McCain plan is to get the Democrats to bail out the GOP's Wall Street friends and then run against them for doing it.

I think summary is accurate.