Assessing the Stunt

There are three ways you can succeed with a political stunt:

1) The people don’t realize it’s a stunt and you look selfless on the face of it.
2) The attention given to the event at issue actually helps a substantive problem get solved. People see it as a stunt but one that “raises awareness” of an important issue and gets things done.
3) The opponent overplays his hand and falls into a sort of trap.

Let’s look at these three criteria.

1) Is what John McCain is doing – suspending his campaign and asking for a postponement of the Friday debate – a stunt?

It’s hard to find anybody that does not believe it’s, at least in part, a political stunt designed to change the political narrative. Polls out today show McCain’s numbers cratering, mostly because of the economic crisis. McCain has pulled oddball stunts like this before in a moment of political peril (the Palin VP pick is an example).

And if this snap poll from SUSA is to be believed, the American people overwhelmingly do NOT support suspending the political campaign because of this financial crisis and do NOT support postponing the Presidential debate.

Meanwhile, Ben Smith of Politico reports that McCain actually spent this morning meeting with Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a disaffected Hillary supporter, and not working to develop a solution to the financial crisis in Washington.

So this stunt fails criteria #1: everybody sees through it and recognizes it as a political gambit and not some truly selfless act of problem-solving.

2) But getting outed as a stuntman doesn’t automatically mean failure. Could John McCain’s appearance in Washington actually help lead to a solution to the bailout negotiations? Forget “being seen” there, will this actually lead to a solution?

Well, it depends on how you assess the situation. The way I read it, Henry Paulson offered a plan that most people despised, and then Senator Dodd offered a set of counter-proposals to provide more oversight, give the government an equity stake, limit executive pay, provide some sort of borrower protection. On all but the latter Paulson has agreed to Dodd’s demands. If ever there was a successful negotiating process, this was it.

Yes, many Senators from the left wing of the Democratic Party and the right wing of the Republican Party railed against the bailout yesterday, but consensus between party leaders in BOTH parties seemed to be that a solution was forthcoming. Warren Buffett even invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs because he was convinced the negotiations were going along smoothly.

So did the negotiation process really need John McCain to come in and save the day? It seems not. The real opponents are conservative Republicans and Dick Cheney (who still has a lot of respect in this caucus) is working those folks hard. What is McCain going to do? Who is he going to convince? Obama has already provided back-channel help to the Dodd plan by signaling his support. A bipartisan solution seemed imminent (much to the consternation of many) before McCain came along.

Ironically, McCain’s bizarre entrance into this debate may actually convince partisan Democrats like Harry Reid to back out of the negotiations, lest it look like he’s bolstering McCain’s Presidential campaign. Senate Democrats don’t want to be used as props for McCain’s “bipartisan maverick” schtick. Unless this is all an ingenious plan to kill the Dodd bill, it seems to be counterproductive for McCain to get involved. Presidential politics will only make this harder to address. And “suspending” his campaign is going to fool nobody that McCain has suspended his Presidential ambitions.

3) So that leaves the Obama response. Could Obama botch the response to this? He could, in my opinion, if he agrees with McCain and comes out looking like a chump. After all, Obama began discussion over a joint statement early this morning and it appears McCain stabbed him in the back with this suspension move.

On the other hand, Obama doesn’t want to appear too cavalier about the financial crisis despite McCain’s evident desperation. A calm, cool “we must deal with the financial crisis first and foremost, but we can multi-task and we should still debate” will be the appropriate response. He can propose altering the substance of the debate to focus on economics instead of foreign policy. He can even suggest that the debate be held in a town hall format (McCain’s favorite) on economics. But he should not accede to postponement of the debate.

In fact, McCain has actually proposed that the debate be postponed until October 2nd when, you guessed, Sarah Palin was supposed to debate Joe Biden. McCain wants the VP debate to be reschedule at a date “yet determined.” Hmmm. McCain wouldn’t be doing this to get Palin out of EVER debating, would he? I mean, he’s allowed her unfettered access to the big, bad press all along, right?

McCain made this move out of desperation. He’s done this before, throwing a bizarre idea out there with no idea if it will work. The American people already see this as a stunt, and there is little indication that it will actually lead to a bailout deal. So that leaves Obama ready to handle this with poise or stumble. We’ll see what happens soon.