In the Wall Street Journal on Feb. 6, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson published an exerpt from his new book, On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System. It describes the scene at the White House in September 2008, after Sen. John McCain dramatically suspended his presidential campaign and flew back to Washington, calling on all political hands to join him in rescuing the collapsing U.S. economy.
"It really was, I thought, a riveting account," Brown says. "There is a great scene in here, where McCain finally gets this meeting that he's summoned. And then what Paulson gives is an account of how, in the meeting with the president, with all the players assembled including [then-candidate] Obama, McCain had absolutely nothing to say. It was like, 'I'm here to stop the fire! Uhhhhh, yeah: Well, maybe I'll just stand here and wait for a pail.' And finally Obama says loudly ... 'I'd like to hear what Sen. McCain has to say, since we haven't heard from him yet.' "
Writes Paulson:
As [McCain] spoke, I could see Obama chuckling. McCain's comments were anticlimactic, to say the least. His return to Washington was impulsive and risky, and I don't think he had a plan in mind. If anything, his gambit only came back to hurt him, as he was pilloried in the press afterward, and in the end, I don't believe his maneuver significantly influenced the TARP legislative process.
It's a revealing look, Brown says, at an "amazing moment in politics, completely subsuming any real care for this crisis that the country was in at the time." Better yet, it's a startlingly direct-seeming bit of reportage — in a partisan era, from a Republican-appointed Treasury secretary — on an incident that left a Republican presidential candidate looking less than presidential.
"I think that, to me, is what's authentic about it," Brown says. "It did feel like a real piece of reporting, which I didn't expect."
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