McCain has married his debate appearance and campaign to this crisis. That is the most abject politicizing of a crisis I have ever seen. And Barbara Boxer pins him to the wall, going after his courage, his capacity for leadership, his integrity and his link to K5. His supposed strong points. God I LOVE it!
I think it was a little political theater to change the debate and let me tell you why he wants to change the debate: of all the people who have been in the forefront of deregulation which is THE cause of this problem, deregulation, is John McCain. It started with the Keating Five when he went in there and tried to press regulators not to go after a Savings and Loans of Charles Keating; and it continued on out through his whole career, leading the charge with Phil Gramm for deregulation.
A President has to deal with it all. Believe me, on a much smaller scale, I represent 37 million people on any given day. I have to do it all and if I am running for President I have to have the courage to do it all and I don't just say time-out and I need to climb up into the corner with my blanket, because life isn't that way and I thought it was bizarre quite frankly.
Video below...
On top of that brutal handling, McCain has missed 101 more roll call votes than Tim Johnson. Granted when running for President, a candidate's current job is going to suffer from some attention deficit. But 101 more missed roll call votes than a stroke victim who missed a solid eight months in the Senate? McCain missed a total of 412 votes, Johnson 311 and Obama 295. And Obama's primary was considerably longer.
And on top of that, McCain last vote was in early APRIL! Obama's last vote was THREE months later in July. And now he wants to just parachute in? No way says Harry Reid:
I like it when I see the fight in them. Classy too, not that petty garbage we used to see from George Allen and Rick Santorum.
UPDATE: understandinglife has provided a Digg link in the comments.
UPDATE 2: hungrycoyote provides a link to the Washington Post project keeping track of missed votes and Sir McCain is the king of the bunch.