Riding his white horse off a cliff.

So, McCain and his surrogates spent the weekend taking credit for bringing everyone to the table to pass the bailout (Romney: "This bill would not have been agreed to, had it not been for John McCain"), and up until about lunch time on Monday, McCain was riding his white horse around and waving his sword over his head while making the claim that he had gone to Washington to bring people together so that the bill would pass and save us all from economic ruin. He said, "I know that many of you have noticed, it's not my style to simply phone it in". Then, he mocked Obama for "monitoring the situation" and said that Obama was "watching from the sidelines", while he rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty to make this happen. The "phone it in" line was used repeatedly by McCain's surrogates, including Lindsey Graham.

On Rachel Maddow's show, she pointed out that McCain was reported to have sat mostly silent during the meeting with George Bush and Obama at the White House, then he went back to one of his condos to make some phone calls to key people. The following day he spent less than two hours on Capitol Hill before leaving for the debate in Mississippi. After the debate, he spent the weekend making more phone calls from his condo. When asked why he wasn't making appearances on Capitol Hill, campaign advisor Mark Hill said, "Because he can effectively do what he needs to do by phone."

Then, the bill fails. Sixty-seven percent of Republicans, the people McCain went to Washington to rally, voted against it. The response from McCain, only a couple of hours after mocking Obama and taking credit for the impending success of the bill, was to say that "Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process. Now is not the time to affix the blame. It’s time to fix the problem." Literally in back-to-back sentences McCain blames Obama, and then tries to claim the high ground by denouncing the blame game. That may be a world record for speed in hypocrisy -- even for a politician. Well, if McCain wants credit for the results of this weekend's labor in Washington, I'm happy to give it to him. He deserves it.