oh, snap! and why

You know, Chris Dodd was my choice before Obama. I like the man. He's solid. And check this out (from Reuters):

interviewed on CNN, Dodd also had harsh words for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who attended the meeting, saying, "What this looked like to me was a rescue plan for John McCain for two hours."

Dodd added, "To be distracted for two to three hours for political theater doesn't help."

Dodd alluded to a new plan being floated by Republicans during the White House meeting. "I don't even know what it is and no one could explain it," Dodd said, noting that this new element could cause lawmakers to start over on legislation, which he did not want to do.

It really does look like this whole "suspend my campaign" stunt was exactly that: John McCain pretending he's so important in Washington that nothing could get done without him, and then, David Kurtz reports:

McCain sat silently at the table until nearly the end, according to a Hill source who was briefed on the meeting. At that point, I'm told, McCain vaguely brought up the proposal being pushed by the Republican Study Committee, the group of House conservatives that is bucking the GOP leadership. But McCain didn't offer any specifics and didn't necessarily advocate for the plan, according to the Hill source.

Responding to McCain, Treasury Secretary Paulson said that the RSC proposal was unworkable, my source says, at which point McCain didn't really advocate for it or state his own position. The meeting adjourned soon after, amid confusion over where negotiations could go next.

The NY Times report was as blunt:

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.

Another Reuters report puts it like this,

according to a statement from the McCain campaign.

"At today's cabinet meeting, John McCain did not attack any proposal or endorse any plan," the statement said.

Senior Democrats said they came away from the afternoon White House session with the impression that McCain was backing an entirely new Wall Street rescue plan, one differing markedly from a Bush administration proposal under discussion for days.

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee and a participant in the White House gathering, said negotiations could be set back by the confusion.

"House Republicans, in some kind of arrangement with McCain, went off to wherever. I don't know whether they're ready to negotiate this. Their thing was some totally different mortgage insurance plan ... that would clearly delay this for a week or more," Frank told reporters.

David Kurtz points out

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, presaged the day's events when he told reporters that he'd had breakfast with McCain's advisers on Wednesday morning and talked by phone with McCain Wednesday night:

"We would prefer a loan or supplying insurance," Bachus told reporters. "These are the ideas Sen. McCain tried to maximize. He feels strongly we have to design a program where taxpayers won't lose."

...So McCain's gambit to shake up the election by "suspending" his campaign and returning to Washington to hammer out a deal at a big White House meeting ends up killing at least for now the hastily negotiated bailout plan that Treasury and Congress had hammered out. Strangely, almost inexplicably -- or maybe just desperately -- McCain has thrown his lot in with the same conservatives who see him as the perfect example of what is wrong with their party.

So, tell me again about how McCain is "country first"?

Anyway, since he doesn't have anything to say, and doesn't "attack any proposal or endorse any plan", why again can't he take a few hours off from this crisis and head to Mississippi?