Obama says he wants to debate on Friday. I outsource my insta-analysis to National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez:
Some of this is a lot of nonsense, but if I’m just getting home from work and I only pay casual attention to these debates, Obama sounds reasonable and less gimmicky than McCain.
He says that there is no reason why we can’t do more than one thing at once. Obama says it is "more important than ever" to have a debate.
Obama says he called McCain this morning and announced that he wanted to do a no-politics-as-usual joint statement about addressing the market mess. He says that McCain wanted to insist on meeting with the president and congressional leaders too. Obama says Obama said: Let’s do the statement, go from there. Obama says he thought McCain was thinking about the joint statement, working on with staff, when McCain went on TV. So now Obama is on TV.
Obama says he's told Pelosi, Reid, and Paulson that "if I can be helpful, I am prepared to be [in dc] anytime" but I don’t want to infuse presidential politics on the hill and goes on about how presidents need to be able to multitask.
Obama may win this campaign moment yet. If McCain protests, he looks petty.
And remember. That's how a McCain supporter is reacting to all of this. You do wonder if stunt fatigue is simply setting in. First there was the Palin pick. Then there was the jihad against the Times. At a certain point McCain's "bold" moves start to seem a little stale and predictable, don't they?
--Jason Zengerle