A Telling Week for Team McCain

Wag the dog, change the subject, change the channel, beam him up, somebody just get John McCain out of here! He doesn’t want to have a debate on anything — not the economy, not how he will vote on the bailout package, not Sarah Palin, not why he ditched David Letterman and got caught, not President Bush, not Rick Davis taking Freddie Mac money up until last month, not the fact that the financial crisis isn’t Chris Cox’s fault, not his own ability to act presidential during a national crisis, none of this.

Please, Steve Schmidt, where is Plan B?

The McCain campaign has become the gift that keeps on giving. Having declared the fundamentals of the economy strong just 10 days ago, McCain — who hasn’t called anybody on Capitol Hill or had any role in the bailout negotiations — now needs to skip his first debate to hunker down in Washington on the bailout package on a Friday night. Has he thought about how it will look if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) decide not to let him in the room?

Clearly McCain is panicked over the debate, and the myriad awkward subjects he wishes to avoid. He is now knocked when Palin doesn’t give interviews, and he is knocked when she can’t answer the interview questions. McCain has swung from deregulator to regulator in one week, and sent his top female surrogate on the economy to the wilderness after she suggested that neither he nor Palin could run a big company (by the way, she earned one of those horrid $43 million severance packages McCain has been railing against ever since Lehman Brothers bellied up).

The first debate was supposed to be about foreign policy, and with all that’s going on with the financial crisis, it’s not likely to stay on that topic. Worst of all, McCain and his team look like hypocrites now that we learn Rick Davis, his campaign manager, rigged a $15,000 per month retainer for his firm with Freddie Mac and payments were made up through last month for what appears to be pay-for-access and no work whatsoever. In my column this week, I noted that Davis let McCain lie about this on television a few days ago, just after the candidate’s worst week ever, when everyone was calling him a liar.

It all raises critical questions about how McCain allows his team to function, and how he reacts in a crisis. Important things to know about a man who could soon be our next president.

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CAN EITHER CANDIDATE OPPOSE THE BAILOUT? Ask A.B. returns Tuesday, Sept. 30. Please join my weekly video Q&A by sending your questions and comments to askab@digital-stage.thehill.com. Thank you.