So John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are all flying back on Wednesday for the big vote on an ever-so-slightly tweaked version of the bailout package. It’s not a big surprise, since both Obama and McCain are vested in the outcome now. But it’s one more reminder that, when you’re a senator running for the White House, no good ever seems to come from returning to your day job.

The last time Obama showed up for a vote, on July 9, it was to support a rewrite of the nation’s electronic surveillance rules. His vote was wildly unpopular among the Democratic base, and many leading Democratic senators disagreed with Obama. (Like Biden, for example.) But at least Obama’s vote made it impossible for McCain to attack Obama as weak on terrorism. Oh wait, he still does that.

The last time McCain came back to vote — on April 8, back when spring was in the air and the trees were just starting to bloom — it was a simple procedural vote to end debate on housing legislation. But he’s had plenty of opportunities to vote since then, on a popular wage discrimination bill he opposed, a popular veterans’ educational benefits bill he didn’t like, etc.

Somehow, those didn’t seem like smart votes for McCain to cast, so he stayed away. And then, of course, McCain and Obama came back last week — largely at McCain’s insistence — to jump into the negotiations on the bailout bill. And that worked out well, didn’t it?

The two spent much of the day Tuesday trying to look more active in suggesting ways to get past Monday’s defeat of the bailout bill in the House. Both Obama and McCain suggested increasing the FDIC deposit insurance from $100,000 and $250,000, and it appears that the idea will be included in the Senate package tomorrow. But all Obama got for proposing the idea was a smackdown from House Minority Leader John Boehner’s office, which accused him of stealing it from House Republicans.

And both nominees had large factions of their party turn against the bill on Monday — though it was McCain, whose main claim in the process was that he had gotten House Republicans back to the table, who suffered the biggest embarrassment.

Obama seemed to be addressing liberal Democrats — particularly the 95 House Democrats who voted against the bill Monday, arguing that it rewarded corporate greed — as he tried to make the case for the bailout in a speech Tuesday in Reno, Nevada. “If your neighbor’s house is burning, you’re not going to spend a whole lot of time saying, ‘Well, that guy was always irresponsible. He always left the stove on. He always was smoking in bed,’” Obama said. “All of those things may be true, but his house could end up affecting your house.”

And in Iowa, McCain tried to use a generic, but practical, pitch that might appeal to some of the 133 House Republicans who voted against it. “Bipartisanship is a tough thing, never more so when you’re trying to take necessary but publicly unpopular action. But inaction is not an option,” McCain said. “Businesses all over the country cannot borrow to finance their own operations and pay their bills. If we do nothing, many may fail.”

On Wednesday night, both McCain and Obama will have to hope that their return to the Senate floor won’t end in yet another defeat — for the bailout effort and for themselves.

To those who watched John McCain spend tonight’s debate repeating, over and over again, some variation of the phrase “Senator Obama doesn’t understand,” it might seem like nothing more than a debate tactic — a way of convincing viewers that Barack Obama is too inexperienced to understand complicated foreign policy and national security issues.

At some level, it probably was a debate tactic. (Or a strategy — McCain said Obama didn’t understand the difference.) But it’s also consistent with McCain’s personality as a senator. As much as he was known for his independent streak, McCain also gained a reputation for being condescending and self-righteous with his colleagues at times, a trait that made some Hill Republicans reluctant to support him until it was clear he has won the nomination.

Take this floor speech from 1998, as a tobacco regulation bill McCain had championed was about to go down in defear: “Maybe we ought to remember the obligations that we incur when we govern America. Maybe we might remember the principles of the founder of our party when we are defining the Republican Party and how we vote on this legislation. We might understand that our obligation, first of all, is to those who cannot care for themselves in our society, and that includes our children.”

McCain also took on a scolding tone in September 2005 to Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, then the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, as he berated Abizaid and other commanders for not sending enough troops to Iraq. “There’s no expert that I know that doesn’t attest that we needed more troops at the time a lot of us said we needed them,” McCain said.

Lately, the “what you don’t understand” tone has gotten McCain into trouble. In July, when he came under fire for mistakenly suggesting that the surge led to the “Anbar awakening” — in which Sunni tribal leaders turned against al Qaeda in Iraq — McCain, rather than admitting an error, insisted a surge can be “a number of components” and suggested many people don’t understand that.

If so, one of them was Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, who testified in April that the awakening “started before the surge.”

The “Obama doesn’t understand” tactic may still work, if McCain can plant enough legitimate seeds of doubt about Obama’s experience. But it’s also likely to make fact-checkers that much more likely to look for errors McCain himself might have made in his statements.

It’s also likely to make people pay that much more attention to what Sarah Palin does and doesn’t understand. Her debate is coming up on Thursday.

So John McCain is heading off to the debates after all, now that his work here is done. What work, exactly? House Minority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri, the second-ranking GOP leader in that chamber, gave the clearest explanation yet today: McCain blocked a deal that House Republicans didn’t like.

In an interview with MSNBC, Blunt, who has now joined the talks on the financial bailout package on behalf of House Republicans, gave McCain credit for slowing down the train as other negotiators seemed close to a deal yesterday:

“Clearly, yesterday — his position on that discussion yesterday was one that stopped a deal from finalizing that no House Republican, in my view, would have been for, which means it wouldn’t have probably passed the House.

“Now, Democrats are in the majority. They can pass anything they want to without a single Republican vote. But they don’t seem to be willing to do that.

“I’m pleased we can have negotiations now that get us back toward things that we think can protect the taxpayers better, create more options, and, frankly, be better understood in the country than the plan — than the path we were on just a couple of days ago.”

Barack Obama’s campaign jumped on that statement as an admission that McCain never meant to help the talks at all.

“Congressman Blunt just confirmed what’s been clear since John McCain rode into Washington at the eleventh hour - Senator McCain’s political theatrics succeeded only in stopping a bipartisan deal,” campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement. “During the most serious economic crisis of our time, we don’t need erratic posturing, we need steady leadership to protect American taxpayers and put our economy back on track.”

Stopping an unpopular deal, however, is not necessarily a bad thing on Capitol Hill. Many lawmakers, from both parties, say it’s part of their jobs to stop bad things from happening as well as trying to get good things done.

And it’s not as if House Republicans are the only ones who are up in arms about the prospect of a $700 billion, taxpayer-funded bailout. Outside the White House yesterday, a small crowd of demonstrators on the left protested the proposed deal. Many carrying “Nader-Gonzalez” signs, referring to independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and running mate Matt Gonzalez, a ticket about as far from the views of your average House Republican as it’s possible to get.

But McCain never said he was coming to town to block a deal. He said he was returning to Washington to urge both parties to “work together again and put our country first.” And Blunt’s account is at odds with the description of McCain’s campaign, which worked hard yesterday to shoot down reports that McCain was trying to sink the emerging bailout deal.

“John McCain did not attack any proposal or endorse any plan,” the campaign said in a memo to reporters late last night. “John McCain simply urged that for any proposal to enjoy the confidence of the American people, stressing that all sides would have to cooperate and build a bipartisan consensus for a solution that protects taxpayers.”

The memo also insisted that “there never existed a ‘deal,’ but merely a proposal offered by a small, select group of Members of Congress.”

Sounds like it’s time for McCain and the House Republicans to get their stories straight.

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.

Okay, so it’s probably not the best use of reporters’ time to try to ask questions of the presidential nominees before the big White House meeting on the bailout plan.

But both Barack Obama and John McCain were in their Senate offices just before leaving for the White House, so huge groups of reporters and camera crews gathered in front of both offices. I happened to be with the Obama group just as he left.

“What do you hope to accomplish at this meeting?” a reporter shouted as Obama and his Secret Service agents speed-walked through the lobby of the Hart Senate Office Building.

“I’ll have a statement after the meeting,” Obama said.

“What do you think of McCain coming back for this?”

“I’ll have a statement after the meeting,” Obama said, politely but firmly. “Hope to see you there.”

“How are you at staying on message?”

Silence.

The tension was unbearable. I pulled out the last trick I had, to see if anything could knock him off message in such a situation.

“Beatles or Stones?”

Obama laughed.

“Stones,” he said.

The mystery of what, exactly, John McCain is going to do to help the financial bailout deal continues.

He’s back on Capitol Hill today, getting ready for a 4:00 meeting at the White House with President Bush, Barack Obama, and congressional leaders to discuss how everyone can find a bipartisan agreement on a bailout package. Some Republicans say they think McCain can help build support for the package among reluctant House Republicans. But from all indications, the talks themselves are going pretty well already.

“I’m glad that we’ll be able to go and tell them that there’s not much of a deadlock to break. But I’m always glad to get to go to the White House,” House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank told reporters after the latest round of bipartisan talks.

So a few minutes ago, I ran into House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio — one of McCain’s key allies on the Hill — and asked him how McCain was going to help the bailout package.

The answer came in the form of the “Boehner shrug.” It’s a longstanding tradition on Capitol Hill. Whenever Boehner doesn’t like the question or has nothing to say, he gives you an unquotable shrug.

“All hands on deck?” Boehner offered.

No, seriously, I asked, trying again. Is McCain going to rally support among Republicans? If not, what else is he going to do?

Shrug.

And Boehner kept walking.

John McCain says he’s trying to “set politics aside” by suspending his campaign and coming back to Washington to work on the financial crisis. (He’s even suspending his ads!)

And yet, for a non-political exercise, it’s funny how quickly lawmakers on Capitol Hill seemed to have their talking points ready about the whole thing.

On the Republican side, they’ve been talking about how important it is for both McCain and Barack Obama to come back to work on a bipartisan solution, since one of them will be left holding the bag in a few months.

“Your two candidates who will have a stake in the outcome have a responsibility in this process,” Rep. Adam H. Putnam of Florida, chairman of the House Republican Conference, told reporters during a House vote a while ago.

That’s awfully close to the language of the statement House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio used in a statement he put out minutes later. “Given that it is only a few months before a new President takes the oath of office, it is vital that the next President play an active role in crafting this critical plan,” Boehner said.

For that matter, Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, vice chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, beat everyone to the punch, saying “it would be helpful if McCain and Obama stood up and said they want to be part of this” even before McCain announced the plan.

The Democrats, meanwhile, got together quickly and gave Obama the pass he needed to avoid coming back to Capitol Hill — at least while the bailout package is being negotiated. (Obama did say at a press conference this afternoon that he and McCain should come back for the final vote “to send a strong message that, in fact, we need to get something done.”)

“It would not be helpful at this time to have them come back during these negotiations and risk injecting presidential politics into this process or distract important talks about the future of our nation’s economy,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said in a statement released minutes after McCain’s announcement. “If that changes, we will call upon them.”

That was quickly followed by a floor speech by Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Obama’s Illinois colleague. Durbin backed up Obama’s story that he was the one who first called McCain this morning and suggested putting out a joint statement about the financial crisis — before McCain raised the stakes by suspending his campaign and challenging Obama to do the same.

“He can make that decision if he chooses to,” Durbin said of McCain’s plan to return to Washington, “but I think the honest honest answer is he will bring the presidential campaign with him to Washington … It is a charged political atmosphere. Bringing a presidential campaign into this atmosphere is not going to make it easier or more likely it will come to a good ending.”

And what would McCain do when he gets here? Republican Rep. Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia, one of the few lawmakers who doesn’t use anyone’s talking points these days, insists McCain could play a positive role by talking to members and rallying support for the bailout, since “I think a lot of members are in denial that this is really happening.”

McCain has actually managed to cut through the political games before — particularly as the co-leader of the bipartisan “Gang of 14,” which prevented a showdown over filibusters of judicial nominations in the Senate three years ago. So far, though, his return to Washington shows no signs of cutting through political games of any kind.

It might not last beyond the election, but for now, at least, the two presidential candidates seem to be in a race to see who can be the biggest champion of open government.

Today, Barack Obama put out a plan to “reform the greed and excesses of Washington” that went way beyond responding to the near-collapse of the nation’s financial system. Among other things, his plan calls for opening congressional negotiations to the public, letting people watch agency meetings on the Web, overhauling the Bush administration’s system of rating the performance of federal programs, reducing earmarks, and listing the industries that benefit from new tax breaks passed by Congress.

For a guy who’s usually accused of being too vague and rhetorical, he put out so many nuts and bolts today that it’s hard to see how he could get even half of them done. Especially since some of them, at least, will require the sign-off of congressional leaders who haven’t always been champions of open government themselves.

John McCain, meanwhile, has already promised in his Republican convention speech to “set a new standard for transparency and accountability.” He hasn’t fleshed out a lot of details, but he has dropped hints in past speeches, such as pledging to come before Congress and answer questions like the British prime minister does in “question time” before the House of Commons.

It’s a natural competition, considering both McCain and Obama worked on ethics and transparency issues in various forms in the Senate. And both are co-sponsors of a bill that would expand the federal spending database created by a 2006 law co-written by Obama and Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.

“It’s a race to the top, if you will,” said Gary D. Bass, founder and executive director of OMB Watch, an executive branch watchdog group. “It’s a pleasant competition to see who can call for more transparency. It’s exciting, from my point of view.”

Bass says Obama has gotten more specific about his ideas, though — particularly with today’s plan, which gets into such arcane details as banning employees of his administration from working on any regulations or contracts for two years that have anything to do with their prior work.

Of course, neither candidate has been total models of openness on the campaign trail, which should give people plenty of reason to wonder whether they’d actually keep their promises. McCain once promised to hold weekly news conferences as president, but rarely bothers to take questions from the campaign press corps anymore, preferring tightly scripted speeches instead.

And Obama has been known to treat press questions as a chore as well, as in the March press conference where he complained, “Come on guys, I answered like eight questions.”

Still, both candidates have now been vocal enough about their open-government goals that it will be hard for either one of them to walk them back completely in the White House.

Barack Obama has always had a unique dilemma in this presidential campaign. He was basically pushed into the race — and perhaps let himself be pushed — not because he had a ton of Senate experience to brag about, but because his allies thought he was the best fit for the kind of Democrat voters would be looking for this year.

That may still turn out to be the case, depending on how excited you get about the tracking polls. (He’s inching back into a slight lead over John McCain, according to Gallup.) But the price Obama is paying for running so early is that his Senate record can only do him so much good. Whenever he tries to stretch it into something it’s not, like he has done in recent days on the economic stimulus package and Pell Grants, he risks looking silly.

Take the speeches he has been giving about the financial meltdown. For the past couple of days, Obama has been trying to suggest that he was ahead of the curve in his Senate work on the issue. Here’s what he said today in Espanola, New Mexico: “It was two years ago that I introduced legislation to stop mortgage transactions that promoted fraud, risk or abuse. It was one year ago that I called on our Treasury Secretary and our FED Chairman to bring every stakeholder together and find a solution to the subprime mortgage meltdown before it got worse.”

Well, yes, Obama did introduce a bill in February 2006, the “STOP FRAUD Act,” which would have defined mortgage fraud and imposed federal penalties against it. It was referred to the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and has been collecting dust ever since. He gave one floor speech on the measure, but since he wasn’t on the committee, and Republicans were in charge then anyway, that was as far as things went.

And yes, Obama did write a letter in March 2007 to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, warning of “grave concern in low-income communities about a potential coming wave of foreclosures” and calling for them to organize a summit with mortgage lenders, investors, regulators, and consumers to figure out what to do about it.

The thing is, though, senators write letters to federal regulators all the time without actually causing anything to happen. And since Obama was already on the campaign trail by that point, it wasn’t like he could invest a lot of time in following up.

It’s not that Obama is alone in trying to look like he sounded dire warnings in the Senate. McCain has done some hyping of his own in claiming that he had warned of problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years ago, when he really just signed onto a bill well after a government report issued a loud alarm about accounting problems.

But McCain isn’t the nominee who faces the most questions about his experience in national politics. Everyone knows McCain has other significant accomplishments, even if predicting the financial crisis isn’t one of them. It’s Obama who is having to reassure the voters that he has done important things in his political career.

Obama does have a few accomplishments he can genuinely brag about in the Senate — a role in last year’s ethics overhaul, a government transparency bill he co-wrote with Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and a weapons nonproliferation law he co-wrote with Republican Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana.

But those accomplishments have been picked over pretty thoroughly, and every time Obama tries to go beyond them, he unintentionally reminds people of how thin the material is from his Senate years. If voters choose Obama, they will base their vote on his other qualities — his ideas, intelligence, personality, charisma, maybe even the simple fact that he’s a Democrat. It’s not going to be because of the letters he wrote.

Over the last few days, John McCain has been doing his best to channel one of his heroes, Theodore Roosevelt, by promising better regulation of the markets in response to the financial meltdown. How do congressional Republicans feel about the return of Teddy Roosevelt? They’re doing their best to play along — mostly because they have no choice.

The notion of tackling what TR called the “malefactors of great wealth” won the Arizona senator tepid support, at best, when he railed against the “special interests” in Washington during his nomination speech two weeks ago in St. Paul. Citing his battles with such interests as a key entry on his resume, McCain won just a polite smattering of applause.

Now, though, Republicans on Capitol Hill are tiptoeing toward McCain’s view that the financial markets might actually need more regulation. Just, you know, not too much.

“There should be a red flashing light — ‘Do no harm,’ ” Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas told me this afternoon. “But at the same time, you’ve got to exercise your oversight responsibilities.”

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota said it was “fair to say that under Freddie [Mac] and Fannie [Mae], the regulation was weak. And we allowed them to continue, for some period of time, with that weak regulation.”

“I think where John is rhetorically right now is the right place to be,” Thune said. “What everyone’s seeing right now is greed run amok, and they see that with a little more oversight and transparency and accountability, some of these things could have been avoided.”

Even McCain is struggling with how to promise a crackdown without worrying business conservatives who fear an overreaction. Here’s how he put it in an interview on CNBC yesterday:

“I think one of the biggest problems, of course, is the excess and greed and corruption. I know that you know that there’s always been — go back to Adam Smith — that there’s been a social contract between capitalism and the citizen, and that’s been broken in Wall Street. When you see these people who were the top executives, after really having failing enterprises and not succeeding leaving with these huge packages, that makes the American people cynical. And, frankly, it threatens the free enterprise system and then lends itself sometimes to overregulation.

“We need to catch up with oversight and regulation and transparency, but, obviously, we don’t want to burden average citizens with overregulation and government bureaucracy. And I’m proud to be a Teddy Roosevelt Republican, who said unfettered capitalism leads to corruption. And we’ve got to fix this.”

McCain has always had a fondness for Roosevelt, but he also claims to draw inspiration from Ronald Reagan — a counterintuitive pairing of heroes that underlines his own conflicted views about how to respond to the current crisis. And, of course, he has spoken at great lengths on other occasions about the need for less regulation — particularly when he voted against the 1996 telecommunications overhaul, citing the ways the “special interests” were preventing Congress from deregulating the industry enough.

But for now, at least, his Republican colleagues seem to be sharing the conflict, which will probably help keep McCain on safe ground. As Thune put it, “There’s a difference between the heavy hand of regulation that strangles competition and the light touch that ensures it.” For now, he said, “I think we could use a little more of the light touch.”

Well, that may have been the shortest-lived claim ever made about John McCain’s Senate record.

This morning, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, one of McCain’s top policy advisers, told reporters that McCain helped create the BlackBerry through his work as chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. How? By presiding over the committee that had jursidiction over the telecommunications industry at a time when this kind of stuff was taking place.

Within hours, McCain’s spokespeople were backing away from that remark so fast you could almost see the cartoon smoke where their bodies used to be.

“It was a joke by a staffer - people need to lighten up,” said spokesman Tucker Bounds. “John McCain heard about the comment and laughed himself. He isn’t laying claim to inventing anything - much less a BlackBerry. Our policy advisor is clearly better with economics than comedy.”

Of course, it was odd that none of the news organizations that reported the comment took it as a joke. But give the McCain people credit for one thing: At least they’re not trying to stick with a claim that they could never possibly back up.

A quick look at McCain’s work as Commerce chairman tells you why. Virtually all of his hearings were about other things: tobacco regulation, the “Y2K” challenge (remember Y2K?), trade with China, climate change, and pet causes such as media ownership and the Air Force’s decision to lease refueling tankers from Boeing. When he dealt with the telecommunications industry, it was usually on broader topics like competition and mergers.

The McCain campaign dealt with this incident as quickly as possible. Now, it will be interesting to see if they rein in the recent series of factually challenged ads that may do more damage to their credibility in the long run.

There was a bit of a jarring moment on Wednesday as Barack Obama, campaigning in Norfolk, Virginia, made a bold statement about his Senate record as he defended himself against John McCain’s attacks. “Students this year in Virginia will see an increase in their Pell Grants because of my work in the Senate,” Obama told the crowd.

Really? He did that all by himself? Maybe Obama is a more powerful senator than anyone thought.

In reality, an increase in the maximum Pell Grant award for needy college students has been more of a cause than an accomplishment for Obama. Yes, one could argue he had a role in making the awards more generous — but only in the sense that he was in favor of it, as opposed to being there when it mattered.

Obama’s aides note that the first bill he ever introduced in the Senate, in March 2005, was a measure to increase Pell Grants. It was referred to the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and that’s as far as it got. (That shouldn’t be a big surprise — the Republicans were in charge of the committee at the time, and Obama wasn’t even on it.)

Things didn’t really get moving on Pell Grants until last year, when Congress, now under Democratic control, passed the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, which increases the maximum Pell Grant award from $4,310 to $5,400 over the next five years.

That’s the law Obama was referring to at the campaign rally, his aides say. At the time, he put out a press release noting that he “sat on the Conference Committee that won these improvements in the bill” — referring to the joing House-Senate committee that worked out the final language of the bill.

Well, yes, but only in the sense that every member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee was on the conference committee. (Obama joined the education panel at the beginning of 2007.) And even then, it appears that Obama wasn’t actually there when the conference committee did its work. It only met once — on Sept. 5, 2007 — and a committee tally sheet indicates that Obama was not one of the senators who showed up.

Obama wasn’t even around to vote for the bill in the full Senate. Of the 21 votes the Senate took — on amendments, procedural motions, passing the original bill, and clearing the final version for President Bush’s signature — Obama only made three of the votes, all of which were on relatively minor amendments and took place during a one-hour block of time on one day of the debate in July 2007. In other words, he dropped by, but he didn’t stick around.

Even McCain, who was also in the thick of his own presidential race, showed up for the vote on the bill. He won’t be able to claim credit for that, since he voted against the bill. So if Obama wanted to attack McCain for voting against more generous Pell Grants, that would be a fair charge.

But McCain isn’t the one who is claiming credit for increasing Pell Grants through “my work in the Senate.” At a time when the Republicans are trying so hard to depict Obama as a senator who has never accomplished anything — and at a time when he’s arguing that it is the McCain campaign that is playing fast and loose with the facts — he can’t afford too many slip-ups like this one.

By now, the image of Sarah Palin as a fighter of earmarks is central to John McCain’s narrative of why he picked her. So it’s worth a closer look at Palin’s actual record on earmarks, which includes the fact that, yes, she did ask for them.

On the trail, Palin never actually claims that she hasn’t asked for earmarks. But she definitely leaves the impression that she’s every bit as passionate a fighter against the practice as McCain is, and certainly more so than Barack Obama, who didn’t endorse a moratorium on earmarks until this year.

“I championed earmark reform, also, to help Congress stop wasting money on those things that do not serve the public interest,” Palin said this morning at a campaign rally in Fairfax, Virginia. “We reformed the abuses of earmarks in our state, and it was while our opponent was requesting a billion dollars in earmarks as a senatorial privilege. What I was doing was vetoing half a billion as an executive responsibility.”

That speech touched off some unusually outraged media coverage, which noted that Palin had, in fact, asked Congress for nearly $200 million in federal earmarks just this year. Could it be? Where’s the evidence?

Fortunately, if you’re curious, you can look them all up, thanks to the Web site of Alaska’s earmark king, Sen. Ted Stevens — who was thoughtful enough to list all of the earmark requests he got and who asked for them. Sure enough, Palin’s office submitted 31 requests, totalling approximately $197 million. You can read the list here.

It’s not that the image of Palin as an earmark fighter is a total myth. Palin did, in fact, anger Stevens by trying to cut back on earmark requests. “It is a difficult thing to get over right now, the feeling that we don’t represent Alaska because Alaska doesn’t want earmarks,” Stevens told the Anchorage Daily News in March.

Palin made it clear she was trying to get on the right side of growing momentum to rein in federal earmarks. “You can either be proactive and be a part of the positive changes that are coming,” she told the paper, “or you can try to fight this new system that’s coming in.”

In addition, the cover letter to Stevens states that the requests were “reduced significantly from previous years,” noting that Palin’s office was “mindful of congressional concerns about budget deficits and earmarks.” That statement shows that “there is some recognition … that there is some problem generally with earmarks,” said Steve Ellis, a spokesman for the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

In a memo e-mailed to reporters this afternoon, the McCain campaign said Palin’s requests were a significant reduction from the record of the previous Alaska governor, Republican Frank Murkowski, whom Palin unseated in 2006. Murkowski’s final request asked for $350 million in earmarks, according to the campaign.

Still, asking for fewer earmarks is not the same as rejecting them on principle. “It would obviously be hard to say that here’s 31 earmark requests worth nearly $200 million and earmarks are evil,” said Ellis. It’s worth keeping in mind every time McCain and Palin try to present themselves as the taxpayers’ best friends and the earmarkers’ worst enemies.

Lately, Sarah Palin has been taking quite a beating in the press for repeatedly claiming that she told Congress “thanks, but no thanks” to federal funding for the “Bridge to Nowhere,” even though she was all for it during her campaign for Alaska governor in 2006. Now, Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, one of the Senate’s most vocal opponents of earmarks, is rushing to her defense and claiming that she did stop the bridge after all.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed this morning titled “Yes, Palin Did Stop That Bridge” — which he e-mailed to supporters — DeMint acknowledges that Palin wasn’t always an opponent of the bridge. But he still gives her credit for ending it, saying she saw the light and changed her mind.

“Yes, she once supported the project: But after witnessing the problems created by earmarks for her state and for the nation’s budget, she did what others like me have done: She changed her position and saved taxpayers millions,” DeMint wrote. “Even the Alaska Democratic Party credits her with killing the bridge.”

Technically, Palin did make the final move against the bridge. There’s a difference, though, between taking a lonely stand against a popular spending initiative and turning against it when all of the momentum is already gone. My colleague Jonathan Allen does a nice job of walking through the sequence events here.

And when a McCain ad made the same claim — stating flat-out that Palin “stopped the Bridge to Nowhere” — PolitiFact, the fact-checking project run by CQ and the St. Petersburg Times, called it “barely true.”

What Palin actually did, according to PolitiFact, was to perform the “last rites” for a bridge that was already well on its way to being scuttled.

That squares with what Alaska state Sen. Bert Stedman, the Republican co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee, told me last week during an interview about Palin’s dealings with the Legislature. “The whole thing wasn’t going to be built anyway,” Stedman said. The main value of Palin’s last-minute stand against the bridge, he said, was that “it makes for good politics outside the state.”

DeMint also took some swipes against Barack Obama’s record on earmarks, and some of them are clearly supported by the facts.

“When the Senate had its chance to stop the Bridge to Nowhere and transfer the money to Katrina rebuilding, Messrs. Obama and Biden voted for the $223 million earmark,” DeMint wrote. That’s a reference to a 2005 attempt by Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to redirect the money to Katrina recovery. Only 15 senators voted for Coburn’s amendment, and both Obama and Biden opposed it.

DeMint also points out, correctly, that Obama never took much of an interest in cutting down on earmarks until earlier this year, when he co-sponsored a DeMint measure — also backed by John McCain — to impose a one-year moratorium on earmarks.

But DeMint leaves out one story in which Obama took his side on a crucial earmark vote.

During the 2007 debate on the ethics bill, Obama was one of only nine Democrats to vote against an attempt to kill DeMint’s amendment to require greater disclosure of earmarks, such as listing the names of who sponsors them and who receives them. In fact, Obama voted against his Illinois colleague and close friend, Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, who sponsored the motion to kill the DeMint amendment.

“He was actually listening, which doesn’t happen very often around here,” DeMint told me at the time. “Whatever he lacks in experience, he makes up for it in intelligence and thoughtfulness.” Oops.

Here’s one of the things that happens when you have two longtime senators in the presidential race: They start running against each other’s votes, even when one is at the top of the ticket and the other is at the bottom of the ticket.

This morning, Barack Obama released a new TV ad that slams McCain’s education record in the Senate. Among other things, it accuses McCain of voting to cut education funding. In the little white fine print that flashes by on the screen, the ad cites McCain votes that go back as far as 1999.

That’s way before Obama was in the U.S. Senate, of course, so McCain’s rapid response team couldn’t compare his votes directly to Obama’s. So they swung around to the closest target they could find. They compared McCain’s votes to Joe Biden’s.

“FACT CHECK: Obama Ad Cites Votes Where John McCain Voted FOR Education Funding And Joe Biden Voted NO,” the rapid response e-mail screamed. (Not literally, but it did use all capital letters.) The McCain campaign cited two measures: a 2000 appropriations bill for labor, health, and education programs, and a non-binding spending blueprint from 1999. In both cases, sure enough, McCain voted yes and Biden voted no.

Naturally, there’s an important back story that the McCain campaign doesn’t mention. In both cases, most of the Republicans voted yes and most of the Democrats voted no. In fact, on the spending blueprint, every single Republican voted for it and every single Democrat voted against it. When that happens, it’s usually a red flag that there’s something else going on with the legislation.

Biden himself doesn’t appear to have made any floor speeches or issued statements about those votes. But in the case of the 1999 budget resolution, most Democrats were concerned about the impact of the tax cuts included in the measure by the Republicans, who controlled the Senate at the time. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle said the tax cuts, totalling $777.9 billion over 10 years, would have resulted in “crippling cuts in education, health care, environment, agriculture, food safety and countless other critical areas.”

The 2000 spending bill was a more complicated matter. It didn’t call for actual education funding cuts, according to CQ’s coverage at the time. In fact, the Department of Education’s overall budget would have increased from $37.9 billion to $42.6 billion. Instead, Clinton and most Democrats opposed it because the Senate refused to dedicate funding to specific programs they favored, such as renovating crumbling schools and hiring more teachers so children could learn in smaller classes.

McCain did vote against the Democrats’ attempts to target the education funds to these and other causes. That’s different from actually cutting education funding, though. (I’ve asked the Obama campaign if there’s another reason they cited that vote that we might have missed. If they come up with one, I’ll update this post.)

This is way beyond the level of information the average viewer will get from a TV ad, of course. But it gives you some idea of the lengthy history behind many of these votes. It also may be the first of many McCain vs. Biden matchups we’re likely to see. After all, McCain and Obama have overlapped in the Senate for less than four years. Biden and McCain, however, have served together for almost 22 years.

Now that Sarah Palin has softened up Barack Obama and strengthened up the Republican base, John McCain did what he clearly felt he had the freedom to do tonight: reach out to independent voters.

He did draw a few of those all-important “contrasts” with Obama, the term we like to use instead of attacks, particularly on taxes, trade, and health care. But he stayed away from some of the toughest and most misleading ones he’s used in the past, such as claiming that Obama has voted against funding for the troops when he actually opposed the bill for a different reason (it didn’t have a timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq).

He even extended an olive branch to Obama — despite a few boos from the crowd — saying he has “my respect and admiration.”

Instead, McCain spent much of his speech playing up his independent streak — and his combative nature:

“I’ve fought corruption, and it didn’t matter if the culprits were Democrats or Republicans. They violated their public trust, and had to be held accountable. I’ve fought big spenders in both parties, who waste your money on things you neither need nor want, while you struggle to buy groceries, fill your gas tank and make your mortgage payment — and you will know their names, you will know their names.

“I’ve fought to get million dollar checks out of our elections. I’ve fought lobbyists who stole from Indian tribes. I fought crooked deals in the Pentagon. I fought tobacco companies and trial lawyers, drug companies and union bosses. …

“I don’t mind a good fight. For reasons known only to God, I’ve had quite a few tough ones in my life. But I learned an important lesson along the way. In the end, it matters less that you can fight. What you fight for is the real test.”

He also provided a window into his own, complicated definition of the Republican Party — which includes one of his heroes, trust-busting Theodore Roosevelt — and implicitly rejected much of what has happened during the Bush years.

“We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger,” McCain said. “The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics.”

He even promised to appoint Democrats and independents to serve in his administration. That may be little more than a sign that Joe Lieberman will have a job, though everyone sort of figured that anyway. But he used his acceptance speech as a way to set up the ultimate contrast, between Obama’s rhetoric and his own record: “I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again. I have that record and the scars to prove it. Senator Obama does not.”

It may have been the best strategy McCain could have hoped for at this convention, letting Palin work the base while he works the independents. But it only comes after a long season in which McCain has tried to do both jobs, veering all over the political road as he did it. Over the long run, his strategy may work — but only if the voters are convinced they’ve finally seen the real McCain this time.

If ever there was any doubt that congressional Republicans are taking a back seat to John McCain and Sarah Palin in this year’s election — a seat way in the back — they were just erased by the speeches given by the party’s two top campaign operatives.

Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, and Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, had the jobs no one really wanted at this convention. They had to go out and try to get the delegates excited about trying to take back the majorities in the House and Senate, in a year when no one really thinks that’s possible.

In fact, even Cole really didn’t seem to be into it. He looked half-asleep as he walked the delegates through the standard House Republican talking points about gasoline prices: that House Democrats decided to take a five-week paid vacation rather than vote on their “all of the above” energy plan.

“No wonder Congress’s approval rating is at 9 percent,” Cole said, apparently referring to a Rasmussen Reports survey last week that found likely voters’ approval of Congress had dropped to single digits.

Silence from the crowd.

Cole tried again, this time bringing McCain into the equation. “Our strength in congressional races this year rests at the top of the ticket,” Cole said. “Americans admire John McCain’s courage and support his leadership. The harder you campaign for John McCain, the better our congressional candidates will run.”

More silence. (In fairness, many of the delegates were still filing in. Maybe they just weren’t paying attention.)

A little later, Ensign took the stage. “Are you as fired up as I am?” Ensign called out to the delegates. They weren’t.

But Ensign tried anyway, rallying them with a speech about the way Ronald Reagan inspired the “Republican Revolution” of 1994 — the year Ensign was first elected to the House — and how the cause of freedom would be lost if Republicans don’t take back the majority in the Senate.

“Do you want a country more dependent on Middle Eastern oil and crippled by higher gas prices? Or do you want a country with its own innovative energy supply?” Ensign asked. “Do you want judges who legislate from the bench? Or do you want judges who strictly adhere to the Constitution and our laws? And most importantly, do you want those who do not understand that there is true evil in the world to dictate our foreign policy? Or do you want to continue to stand up to radical Islamic extremists?”

And then, the big closer: “That is why we must work to take back the majority in the United States Senate.” Weak applause.

“We must work to make Sarah Palin our next vice president.” Stronger applause.

“And we must work to elect John McCain our commander in chief.” Strongest applause.

It can’t be easy to live in the shadow of the national ticket. But when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell goes around saying Republicans aren’t going to take the Senate back, even the most partisan delegates have a good grasp of reality.

Ever since Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin became John McCain’s running mate last week, Hillary Rodham Clinton has stayed curiously silent. She put out a brief statement on the day McCain introduced Palin to the nation, saying “we should all be proud of Governor Sarah Palin’s historic nomination” despite their policy disagreements, but she has been lying low ever since.

That’s about to change. On Monday, Clinton will re-emerge to campaign for Obama in Florida, a Clinton aide confirms. (The event was first reported by TPM Election Central.) No other details are available yet, since the Obama campaign hasn’t announced the event, but I’ll update this post when we get more information.

The Clinton event couldn’t come at a more crucial time for Obama. After Palin’s combative speech last night, Obama will need all the help he can get from supporters who can make his case to working women who might have identified with Palin last night. There are other lawmakers who will come to Obama’s aid, but Clinton is probably the strongest firepower he has right now — if she’s there for him.

The response to Palin’s speech may well be a wash. Two focus groups conducted last night by Democratic pollsters Stan Greenberg and Anna Greenberg found that women voters who had supported Clinton were sympathetic to Palin and liked her speaking abilities, but also thought she was too harsh and didn’t like her anti-abortion views.

But if Clinton wants to make sure none of her supporters become tempted by Palin’s candidacy, she may have to dust off the speech she gave at the Democratic convention last week — warning her voters about the consequences of a McCain presidency — and adapt the message for everyone who heard Palin’s speech last night.

Now that we’ve all heard Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin give a speech, one thing is immediately clear: Joe Biden might not be able to walk away with the vice presidential debates in the way that many would have thought 24 hours ago.

It’s not that Biden can’t bury Palin with his knowledge of issues, especially on foreign policy. It’s that it might not be the smart thing to do.

Sure, Biden knows his stuff. As the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, he can dive deep into the finer points of U.S. policy Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East, and pretty much anything else you care to name. Palin, with the help of her speechwriters, seemed to be stretching last night to drop in some national security references in her discussion of oil drilling: “With Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus, and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers.”

But because Biden knows his stuff, and all the players, there can be a bit of a show-off quality to his debating style. As a presidential candidate, Biden did perfect a blunt, no-bull style of discussing complicated issues, but the “look at all the foreign leaders I know” tone could still creep in from time to time. ” I heard the same arguments after I came back from meeting with Milosevic: We can’t act, we can’t send troops there,” Biden said during a discussion of the Darfur crisis at a July 2007 presidential debate.

And then there’s the self-righteousness. “The very thing everybody’s quoting is the very legislation I wrote in January. It said: Begin to draw down combat troops now; get the majority of the combat troops out by March of ‘08,” Biden said at the same debate. “There’s not one person in here that can say we’re going to eliminate all troops unless you’re going to eliminate every physical person who’s an American in Iraq. Tell the truth for a change.”

In those debates, Biden didn’t have to hold back. But if he pulls out all the stops with Palin, he could come off like Al Gore sighing into the microphone during his first debate with George W. Bush in 2000 — or even as an intimidating presence, like Rick Lazio charging up to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s podium during their New York Senate race the same year.

And yet, if Biden tries to cut out all references to his foreign policy experience, what’s the point of having a Foreign Relations Committee chairman on the Democratic ticket? And what’s the point of even having a vice-presidential debate — especially with someone as new to the national scene as Palin — if there’s no substance in it?

“It’s like trying to hit a moving target,” said Democratic strategist Michael Feldman. “He’s a formidable debater, he knows the issues inside and out, but it’s more than that. It’s about making connections, talking to people about what they care about, and drawing contrasts, all at the same time.”

“It was never going to be a lap for him,” said Feldman, “but now that she’s proven herself to be a good communicator and a fairly sympathetic personality, it’s going to be even harder.”

Feldman sad Biden will be on the safest ground if he can keep the debate on issues, rather than personalities. And Biden did show skill on the policy front during most of the Democratic debates, Feldman said, by explaining his views in down-to-earth terms and proving he can “deliver a punch, but with a velvet glove.”

When he debates Palin, that skill will be more important than ever. And if Biden can restrain himself from calling Palin “good looking” one more time, that would be even better.

After eight years of watching Vice President Dick Cheney expand the power of the vice presidency and reject the authority of Congress, lawmakers will be keenly interested in knowing whether the next vice president would be more open to negotiation and allowing congressional oversight.

In the case of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the closest parallel is the way she has dealt with the Legislature. Even a vice president is going to have to deal with Congress at some point, so it’s a good idea to figure out whether they respect the role of the legislative branch. Palin’s tenure has been short, and the details of her record are still coming to light. But already, there are signs that she hasn’t treated the Legislature as a full partner in government.

She has worked with the Democratic minority, state lawmakers say, mainly to pass legislation that the majority Republicans didn’t support, such as measures to raise oil taxes and build a natural gas pipeline from the North Slope oil fields. And she has earned exactly the reputation for independence that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and his allies claim she has.

The down side of that independence, though, has been poor communication with Republican lawmakers who say they would have liked to work with her more closely.

“The governor is very independent, and does not interact with the Legislature very well unless she thinks she needs them,” said Alaska House Speaker John Harris. “It’s hard to have a group conversation with the governor and her staff and get them to listen.” Harris insists he’s a McCain backer and supports Palin’s bid for the vice presidency, but “I’m just trying to be honest with you.”

As a consequence, lawmakers often end up being surprised by what spending items she cuts through the line-item veto, according to state Sen. Bert Stedman, co-chairman of the Finance Committee and the author of the state’s capital budgets.

“Even when we were going through the process, we couldn’t get the administration to take positions on bills that were before the committee,” Stedman said. If he knew in advance what items Palin objected to, he said, he would simply take them out. Instead, he said, the vetoes “give the opportunity for the governor to say, ‘I’m a fiscal conservative, look at my vetoes.”

As for the role of oversight by the Legislature, when I asked Harris whether Palin has been open to it, he had a good laugh. “The answer is no,” Harris said. “The governor is not one who likes to be questioned.”

And Stedman, for his part, said the line-item vetoes have appeared to be “targeted at people who didn’t agree with her political viewpoint.”

Even Palin’s defenders will only go so far in speaking up for her. When I contacted the McCain campaign for a response to Harris and Stedman’s comments, they suggested I talk to Rep. John Coghill, clearly thinking he would have a different view of her record. He did, but he wasn’t exactly a fire-breathing surrogate.

Coghill didn’t deny that Palin has fought with the Legislature, but he attributes the tensions to the normal separation-of-powers fights that governors and legislatures usually have. He said Palin has actually been good about communicating what she wants — but he allowed that she often does so publicly, through the press, rather than through more traditional methods such as speaking to caucus meetings and meeting with lawmakers privately. He believes she hasn’t given more notice about specific vetoes because she doesn’t want them to be seen as threatening lawmakers.

And Coghill says Palin has respected the role of the Legislature, and has just been unusually vocal about her disagreements with the leadership. “She saw what she thought was the right thing to do, and she did it,” Coghill said. “I will say she didn’t do it very tactfully.”

Of course, there’s a difference between a governor who just fights with lawmakers sometimes and one who doesn’t think the executive branch needs to bother listening to the legislative branch at all. Still, Harris says there is a side of Palin that dismisses the importance of the Legislature: “Many people, Democrats and Republicans alike, have seen that her style is, ‘This is the way to do it. Let’s just do it.’ “

And there is one area where Palin is rejecting lawmakers’ oversight authority. Her lawyer has now asked the state personnel board to investigate her role in the firing of the public safety commissioner — and asked the Legislature to drop its own investigation. Palin’s lawyer says it’s the board, not the Legislature, that has jurisdiction over ethics. It’s not exactly the sign of a vice president who would make Congress’ oversight job easy.

You remember Colorado, right? It’s that big battleground state where the Democrats had their convention last week, thinking Barack Obama could steal it away from the Republicans. And if the Republican convention delegates are getting nervous about Sarah Palin, you might expect to see it among the delegation from this crucial swing state.

But you would be wrong. At least, I didn’t see it in talking to Colorado delegates this morning in Minneapolis after a breakfast where Karl Rove, the strategist behind Bush’s 2004 re-election and so many other things, made a pitch on Palin’s behalf.

These delegates acknowledged that they weren’t sure about McCain at first. Most Colorado Republicans weren’t either, which is why Mitt Romney won the February caucus with 59 percent of the vote. But now they say they’re totally on board, partly because of Palin’s socially conservative views and partly because they think it was a good strategic move for McCain to pick a woman.

“I think when he picked her, he pulled the rug out from Obama and strengthened his own chances” in Colorado, said Denver delegate Jean Arkin. She said she feels that way even after all of the negative coverage of Palin over the last few days: “He knew exactly what he was getting. McCain isn’t going to put himself on the line if he doesn’t think she’s the right choice.”

Cynthia Hamlyn, also of Denver, noted that “initially I wasn’t for McCain.” But she says Palin helps because of her pro-gun views and her opposition to abortion, especially with Colorado’s “Human Life Amendment” on the ballot this year — a constitutional amendment that declares that life begins at conception.

Rove’s presentation may have helped as well. According to Ryan Call, the Colorado Republican Party’s political director and legal counsel, Rove countered the criticisms of Palin’s experience by arguing that local politics, where most of Palin’s political career has been based, is where the true battles take place because everyone knows each other and the politics can get personal.

And during Palin’s term as governor, Rove argued that “she’s had to veto more spending than he [Obama] is spending on his own campaign,” Call said.

There also seems to be a backlash against all of the Palin coverage. “It exposes the hypocrisy of our friends on the left for criticizing her for being a working mother,” said Call. “That’s what every working mother in America does. They juggle work and the responsibilities of raising a family.”

That’s not the only reason Palin has been criticized, of course. But you can see that the rebuttals are already being formed as the convention goes on. With all of the excitement Palin has generated among social conservatives — and all of the committed partisans who tend to become delegates at these conventions — it appears that it would take a lot more than this to change their minds.

With all of the questions being raised about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, there’s also a new round of scrutiny over a larger issue: whether we truly have the best system for picking vice presidents.

It’s not just about whether John McCain’s vetters did their jobs, or whether McCain made a rushed choice because he liked Palin and the social conservatives wouldn’t let him have Joe Lieberman. It’s also about the whole idea that the veep choice is up to the candidates and their team, and the convention delegates have to be little more than rubber stamps.

For more than half a century, vice presidents have been selected by the presidential nominees and vetted by their own people, and the party conventions have just ratified the choices. There hasn’t been a vice presidential candidate picked by a convention since Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson threw the choice open to the delegates in 1956. (They picked Estes Kefauver over a young John F. Kennedy.)

But this week, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and his campaign aides have spent much of their time defending the Palin choice. They’ve spent lots of time talking about the pregnancy of her 17-year-old daughter. Earlier today, they released her voter registration records to knock down suggestions that Palin used to be a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, which wants a statewide vote on seceding from the United States. (Weirdly, they blacked out her birth date from all the records, even though it has been widely reported.)

And now, they’ll probably have to turn their attention to a Time magazine report that Palin tried to ban books as mayor of Wasilla.

The episode has highlighted the downside of leaving the running-mate choice entirely to presidential candidates: The vice-presidential candidate, who might well become the president someday, doesn’t get anywhere near the level of public scrutiny that the presidential candidate does.

“With vice presidents, it’s something of an afterthought, and suddenly the vice-presidential candidate appears almost out of nowhere,” said vice presidential historian Timothy Walch.

So far, at least, the delegates don’t seem to be making any moves to dump Palin. And that may be partly because she’s bringing in the cash. CQ’s Bart Jansen reports that Mike DuHaime, McCain’s deputy campaign manager and political director, told a meeting of the Log Cabin Republicans earlier today that before the Palin pick, the campaign was lucky to raise $250,000 online on any given day. In the period from noon to midnight the day McCain announced Palin would be his running mate, DuHaime said, the contributions shot up to $4.4 million.

Of course, that was before all of Palin’s latest problems. But Walch said he’s hard pressed to think of a better alternative to the candidate picking the veep, and other experts on the vice presidency say there probably isn’t one. The reason: Ever since Walter Mondale elevated the role of the office in the 1970s, the vice president has become so influential that he or she has to be someone the president can work with easily.

So even if there was a movement by some of the Republican delegates this week to dump Palin and replace her with someone else, it might create a whole different set of problems for McCain over the long run.

“The vice president is now a top adviser and a confidant. The president has to feel comfortable with them,” said presidential expert George C. Edwards III of Texas A&M University. The best solution is for the vetters to do their jobs and for the presidential candidate to choose wisely, Edwards said, and “in this case, it appears to have been poorly done. It appears impulsive.”

Joel K. Goldstein, a law profesor at St. Louis University, said the nation is “best off giving incentives to presidential nominees to choose well by punishing poor choices.” Unless McCain can put doubts about Palin to rest soon, that may be exactly what will happen.

Here’s a little drama to watch closely in the coming weeks: Could John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate turn out to be the pretext for McCain to drop his longstanding opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

Up until now, the Arizona senator has held out pretty firmly against drilling for oil in ANWR. Even in the June speech where he announced he would drop his opposition to offshore drilling, McCain declared that “When America set aside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, we called it a ‘refuge’ for a reason.”

But he did hint in June that he would listen to people who want to change his mind: “People have said to me, ‘I’m going to bring you new information about ANWR, how environmentally we can make it safe.’ I’ll be glad to accept new information but my position has not changed.”

It wouldn’t be the first time McCain has changed positions on an issue based on changing circumstances, or because people simply changed his mind. He has said he embraced offshore drilling because the skyrocketing price of oil made it necessary to try new things. And he became an advocate of measures to address climate change after he got numerous questions about the topic during his 2000 presidential race.

And Palin, as it turns out, is an outspoken supporter of the idea. In an interview with CNBC that took place before she became McCain’s running mate, the governor of Alaska spent most of her time making the case for drilling in ANWR. “When you ask Alaskans, “Are you ready to allow drilling to take place to a greater degree up on the North Slope, specifically here we’re talking about ANWR, do you want to see that happen?” … Alaskans are saying, “Yes, because we believe that it can be done safely, it can be done prudently, and it had better be done ethically, also. Yes, we want to see that drilling,” Palin said.

Palin also said much of the opposition to drilling was based on “a lot of misperceptions and misconceptions” about what drilling in ANWR would actually mean. “You see pictures, you see visuals from the naysayers, the critics of the idea of opening ANWR, and the pictures that they’re showing are mountains and … polar bears, lots of different wildlife. They’ll show moose in a stream with mountains in the background. That’s not ANWR.”

The Republican Party platform, which was adopted as part of Monday’s hurricane-shortened opening day agenda, carefully straddles the differences between McCain and the rest of the party, saying only that “We oppose any efforts that would permanently block access to the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.”

But House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio, the chairman of the convention and one of McCain’s closest congressional allies, is hinting in a not-so-subtle way that he’d like to see Palin’s views win out. “Let’s do everything we can to take a big step toward energy independence. And that, in my view, would include drilling on the coastal plain of Alaska,” Boehner said Monday on the “Brian and The Judge” radio show. “We can do it in a safe, environmentally safe and sound way, and she is an expert on this.”

And remember, McCain has described Palin as “a partner and a soul-mate.” If someone like that is making the case to start drilling in ANWR, it’s worth watching to see if McCain will listen.

Now that the Republicans have started themselves on the path of a scaled-back convention, the next decision they have to make is another awkward one: When, if ever, is it okay to get back to a full-blown political program?

Sure, Gustav hasn’t breached the levees in New Orleans — yet. But it’s early yet, and the television coverage is full of images of water sloshing over the walls. The full extent of Katrina’s devastation wasn’t clear in the first hours, either.

Even if the storm turns out to be less damaging than expected, though, Republicans will have to figure out whether there’s a tasteful way to say that. After all the effort they’ve invested in showing the nation that they’re concerned about the people in the storm’s path, it will be hard for them to simply say, “Whew. Back to the party!”

So far, John McCain and Republican convention officials say they’re still taking it day by day. On a morning conference call, campaign manager Rick Davis said that “we hope to be able to reclaim our schedule at some point,” and that “we are more optimistic than we were a day ago.” He also sounded more certain than he did at yesterday’s press briefing that McCain would appear in St. Paul on Thursday to accept the nomination in person.

But Davis said the convention officials wouldn’t even decide Tuesday’s program until sometime Tuesday morning. And other top Republicans say it may never be possible to get back to a full-blown program. House Republican Conference Chairman Adam H. Putnam of Florida noted that “it’s still an awkward juxtaposition.”

Even in the best-case scenario, Putnam said, the most the Republicans could do is get back to “a quasi-normal situation” — meaning that “the evening speakers would go on, the speeches take on a decidedly less partisan tone, and the social events take on more of a charitable fundraising function.”

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia said there’s no real need to get back to a full-scale convention, since “it’s all about messaging at this point anyway.” The convention planners should just take it day by day, he said, and “you could hold it over an extra day if you had to.”

Without any further guidance, delegates are biding their time, expressing their sympathy to Gulf residents even as they carry on with many of the social events outside the convention center.

One especially strange scene I ran into this morning was at the Lowry Theater, a few blocks from the Xcel Energy Center, where the Florida delegation was having its picture taken. They all said their hearts go out to the people in the Gulf states — especially since Florida is no stranger to hurricanes — but they said this while clad in the colorful tropical uniform shirts worn by Florida turnpike workers, which made them look like they were still partying at least a little bit.

“I am enjoying being here, but I’m excited that they’re taking note of how serious this is. I’ve been through this before, with hurricanes and water in my basement and everything,” said Melissa Hagan, an alternate delegate from Bay County, in the Florida panhandle. “There are more important things.”

Delegate John Falconetti of Jacksonville was philosophical: “If we’re able to get back to a full program and share in the revelry, that’s great. If not, there’s a reason for it.”

For now, then, Republicans will wait for word on how bad Gustav really has been. And until then, the low-key partying will continue.