Sounds like he just thinks He'll Ride in On his White Horse and set things straight and get all the credit for fixing the bailout mess. Somebody send his ass home.

Oh, and I'm watching the debate tomorrow night. I hope Obama DOES have an empty chair or ends up having a big ole town hall meeting. McCain is the crazy one making the choice to avoid the debate, and it won't be Obama's fault if he says PFTTT to that!

P.S. I wouldn't put it past Gramps to try to stall out the proceedings until just after the debate would have started, just to be a big ole creep.

Hee. Here's Gawker on what happened.

So Barney Frank and Chris Dodd—and some senior Republicans!—hashed out a compromise bailout plan that looked much better than the Paulson plan, and it should pass the House and Senate before the markets open on Monday. Hooray! Except John McCain needs to look like he solved this crisis, so he told Spencer Bachus, the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, to announce that no one agreed to anything and then Bachus added that McCain has his own brand-new plan no one has seen before. So by "solving the crisis" McCain basically torpedoed the bipartisan consensus just as it formed. Barney Frank is all "why didn't Bachus bring this up during our meeting, the fact that John McCain would immediately force him to denounce the plan he just agreed to?" Meanwhile John Boehner has appointed nine ultra-conservative House Republicans to draft a third plan. Ha ha ha...?? The Dodd/Frank plan still might pass. But who knows what Bush will do! We won't debate any of the plans on their merits because what the fuck do we know (except that the Boehner plan will be terrible). Oh and how about those debates?

"I'm hopeful that we can. I believe it's very possible if we can get an agreement in time to for me to get to Mississippi but I also asked Senator Obama to go to 10 town halls with me...he refused." That's a rough quote from McCain to the press at 5:30 or so today. He probably thinks he sounds very leader-y and not just petulant. Obama wouldn't debate me then, on my terms, 100 times, so I won't debate him now! Why can't this 100-year-old man GROW UP.

P.P.S. Here's NYTimes on what happened via First Read

This New York Times analysis lead perhaps sums up best McCain’s gambit. "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.”

More: "At the very least, Mr. McCain’s actions have shaken up the campaign and the negotiations over the bailout package. It has put him at center stage, permitted him to present himself as putting his country ahead of his campaign — a recurring theme of his candidacy — and put him on deck to, if not help orchestrate a deal, at least be associated with one. But Mr. McCain is certainly seeing the risks of making such a direct intervention. He now finds himself in the middle of an ideological war that pits conservative Republicans, loath to spending so much taxpayer money on Wall Street, against the Bush White House, which, with the support of Democrats and a sizable number of Republicans, sees a bailout package as essential to averting a potential economic disaster.”

While there is no doubt a middle ground, at the moment Mr. McCain finds himself between conservatives that he needs to keep on his side for the election … or being identified with the failure to complete a plan."

NY Daily News-John McCain Rides in to Save the Day ... and Makes a Mess