What really happened the day John McCain suspended his campaign

Henry Paulson, George Bush’s treasury secretary, has a new book out, describing his role in the government’s attempt to control the financial meltdown last year. The Wall Street Journal today prints an excerpt.

It’s about the day John McCain, Underdog-like, brought his presidential campaign to a halt and returned to Washington to save the day.

McCain himself has said economics isn’t his strong suit; the tale as Paulson tells is correspondingly comedic. He first describes his worry that the abrupt arrival of McCain would unravel the work the administration had done to get both sides to agree on the steps he felt the country needed to make to avert a complete disaster.

It reminds us again that Bush, his advisers and congress were already working to cope with the mess; they didn’t exactly need a political peacock with no economics background to help.

And remember that Paulson is a Republican.

Anyway, here’s his account of what happened at the summit McCain called for:

Obama and the Democrats were skillfully setting up the story line that McCain’s intervention had polarized the situation and that Republicans were walking away from an agreement. It was brilliant political theater that was about to degenerate into farce. Skipping protocol, the president turned to McCain to offer him a chance to respond: “I think it’s fair that I give you the chance to speak next.”

But McCain demurred. “I’ll wait my turn,” he said. It was an incredible moment, in every sense. This was supposed to be McCain’s meeting—he’d called it, not the president, who had simply accommodated the Republican candidate’s wishes. Now it looked as if McCain had no plan at all — his idea had been to suspend his campaign and summon us all to this meeting. It was not a strategy, it was a political gambit, and the Democrats had matched it with one of their own.

[…]

Decorum started to evaporate as the meeting broke into multiple side conversations with people talking over each other. […]

Finally, raising his voice over the din, Obama said loudly, “I’d like to hear what Senator McCain has to say, since we haven’t heard from him yet.”

The room went silent and all eyes shifted to McCain, who sat quietly in his chair, holding a single note card. He glanced at it quickly and proceeded to make a few general points. He said that many members had legitimate concerns and that I had begun to head in the right direction on executive pay and oversight. He mentioned that Boehner was trying to move his caucus the best he could and that we ought to give him the space to do that. He added he had confidence the consensus could be reached quickly.

As he spoke, I could see Obama chuckling. McCain’s comments were anticlimactic, to say the least. His return to Washington was impulsive and risky, and I don’t think he had a plan in mind.