Beyond the Dome

It’s widely accepted that John McCain took a big risk in returning to Capitol Hill today to jump into the negotiations on the financial bailout plan. So far, all signs suggest that it’s not paying off — for either McCain or the negotiations.

The White House meeting today ended in a bit of a mess. Democrats were annoyed at a group of House Republicans for introducing a new alternative into the equation, one that would involve insuring mortgage-backed securities, rather than buying out bad assets with taxpayer dollars. They came away with the impression that McCain was backing this plan.

McCain’s campaign denied this, insisting in a memo to reporters that “John McCain did not attack any proposal or endorse any plan. John McCain simply urged that for any proposal to enjoy the confidence of the American people … all sides would have to cooperate and build a bipartisan consensus for a solution that protects taxpayers.”

And the McCain campaign accused the Democrats at the meeting of letting Obama run their side of the discussion, turning the meeting into “a contentious shouting match that did not seek to craft a bipartisan solution.”

If that account is true, it probably should surprise, well, nobody. Obama himself suggested the meeting didn’t go well — because he and McCain were there, and probably shouldn’t have been. “When you start injecting presidential politics into delicate negotiations, then you can actually create more problems, rather than less,” he said in an interview on CNN.

“It is amazing how much you can get done when the cameras are not on and nobody is looking to get credit or allocate blame. And I think that both myself and Senator McCain need to be very careful in terms of how we inject ourselves into this process,” Obama said.

McCain, meanwhile, painted a more optimistic picture of the meeting in an interview with NBC than his own campaign described. And he continued to deny that politics had anything at all to do with his decision to return to Capitol Hill:

“Look, I don’t know how it’s, quote, ‘played.’ I have a record of putting my country first. I see that we did not have a deal, and unfortunately we still don’t have a deal. But I think that we’ve made progress, and I’m confident that we will have a deal. How much I had to do with that, I’ll let you and others judge. But I’m going to do what I think is right for the country.”

That’s a lot different from the way McCain — the senator, not the candidate — acts when he’s really trying to negotiate on legislation. When the talks are serious, McCain doesn’t go on TV to talk about the nobility of his efforts. He gets uncharacteristically quiet, brushing off reporters’ questions and insisting that he just can’t, absolutely can’t, talk about what’s happening.

Friday’s events could bring a complete turnaround, of course, depending on what ideas McCain ultimately endorses and which Republicans he bring with him.

But the notion that McCain could bring a bipartisan spirit to the talks — as if lawmakers from both parties weren’t talking already — is not holding up at the moment. So far, it seems he has been more like a wrecking ball.