McLurch

It's not just that McCain is lurching around from Hail Mary to Hail Mary, he lurched into DC to sit silently at the table like lurch on The Addams Family while the jittery House Republicans objected to the plan the Dems worked up with the President and when pressed offered their bizarro version, featuring suspending capital gains taxes and loosening regulation -- like a Vegas roller shooting for one more wild ride.

Per BAGnewsNotes, the problem is rooted in McCain's Gen. Jack D. Ripper-esque character flaw:

Speaking as a clinician now and not just a visual analyst, what McCain demonstrates time-and-again -- as the hallmark of his psychology -- is oppositional-defiant disorder. What McCain gets off on, also reflected in the expression above, is throwing over the status quo. (Although the disorder is primarily attributed to children and closely fits McCain's repeated, indulgent descriptions of his earlier acting out, his touchiness, anger and authority issues are all still very much in evidence.)

Without an appreciation for the psychopathology underlying this behavior, people tend to chalk up the swerve-after-swerve in McCain's career to independence of mind or this ridiculous "maverick" label. I say ridiculous because what we are seeing play out once more is not a constructive trait but an impulsive pathological reaction -- one which manifests itself in a pernicious and destructive way.

Are we living through John McCain's 6th plane crash? It's all very weird. Check out the photo from this NYTimes analysis:

Senator John McCain had intended to ride back into Washington on Thursday as a leader who had put aside presidential politics to help broker a solution to the financial crisis. Instead he found himself in the midst of a remarkable partisan showdown, lacking a clear public message for how to bring it to an end.

At the bipartisan White House meeting that Mr. McCain had called for a day earlier, he sat silently for more than 40 minutes, more observer than leader, and then offered only a vague sense of where he stood, said people in the meeting...

...Mr. Obama might not have fared much better. He had come to Washington only reluctantly, opening himself to criticism by Republicans that he was putting his election bid ahead of the need to resolve the Wall Street crisis, and prompting concern among Democrats that his reaction to the events was simply too measured, considering the stakes.

Still, by nightfall, the day provided the younger and less experienced Mr. Obama an opportunity to, in effect, shift roles with Mr. McCain. For a moment, at least, it was Mr. Obama presenting himself as the old hand at consensus building, and as the real face of bipartisan politics.

“What I’ve found, and I think it was confirmed today, is that when you inject presidential politics into delicate negotiations, it’s not necessarily as helpful as it needs to be,” Mr. Obama told reporters Thursday evening. “Just because there is a lot of glare of the spotlight, there’s the potential for posturing or suspicions.”

Make no mistake about it -- the Republican Party is fractured right now:

Things grew so heated within the caucus, the Politico reported, that "some House Republicans are saying privately that they'd rather 'let the markets crash' than sign on to a massive bailout."

One GOP lawmaker, referring to his defiant colleagues, asked rhetorically: "For the sake of the altar of the free market system, do you accept a Great Depression?"

Of course they do. It's what they did that caused The (First?) Great Depression.

"At the end of the day, there's a lot of people thinking about how to rebuild this party," said GOP strategist Ed Rollins on CNN, "and do we want to rebuild it with John McCain, who's always kind of questionable on the basic facts of fiscal control, all the rest of it, immigration. And I think to a certain extent this 110, 115 members of this study group are saying, here's the time to draw the line in the sand."

"That's pretty scary stuff that they're thinking about party right now and not country, is that what you're saying?" responded host Anderson Cooper.

"I think they're, yes, they're thinking about themselves," said Rollins. "I think they don't think that the threat is as great as a lot of other people do."

Country first, baby.

Oh, and a reminder of McCain's role in the last great banking scandal:



To paraphrase Paris Hilton, "See you at the debate, bitch!"