His finest hour of 2008 (UPDATED AND BUMPED)

“I’d rather be right than be President” – Henry Clay

When I first heard that John McCain had decided to drop everything and come to Washington to deal with the bailout fiasco, I assumed (as many others did) that he would score some political points by acting “bipartisan” and shepherding through a bad deal for the American taxpayer.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Beneath the MSM spin, it’s clear that McCain stood up for House Republicans and their far superior alternative to the Paulson-Democrats fiasco.  As the Wall Street Journal put it:

In the White House meeting, Mr. Boehner came under pressure to relent and support the Bush plan, as did Sen. McCain, said one official familiar with the session. “They were trying to cram it down the throats of Sen. McCain and House Republicans,” the official said.

UPDATE: Forget appearances, check out this statement from McCain (reported by the Disassociated Press via Breitbart, h/t Bearing Drift, empahsis added):

I support the principles that House Republicans are fighting for.

I’m guessing nearly everyone just assumed McCain would knife the House GOP in the back and go with his Senate colleagues, the President, and the Democrats (including the Audacity of Hype).  It would have been the bipartisan thing to do, the easy thing to do, the better-PR thing to do.

Instead, McCain chose the right thing to do, and gave cover his support to the House Republicans.

Ironically, he finally found the salient issue where he has a dramatic disagreement with the President.  In the biggest domestic issue of the year, it’s Bush and Barack Who’s-Same Obama on one side and McCain on the other.

Yet because MSM and the elites are fully swept up in the Paulson Panic, McCain is being ripped, and may very well lose the election over this (Rasmussen has Obama back at 50%, and while Gallup had McCain jump into a tie yesterday, I’d be stunned if it stays there today).

Once again, McCain has shown a willingness to torpedo his political ambitions to do the right thing; sadly, that may be the price of keeping his head and pulling himself out of the Paulson Panic.