Senator John McCain going through a rough phase in his campaign

It has been a rough 8-10 days for the Republican Party, especially for its presidential candidate John McCainJohn McCain. First of all, the Sarah PalinSarah Palin boom that brought a surge in the Republican Party’s popularity was over as soon as it sank in that she lacked the experience necessary to occupy the second highest office in the land, a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Now Governor Sarah Palin faces the daunting though by no means insurmountable prospect of a potentially revealing encounter on Thursday with the Democratic candidate for Vice President Senator Joe BidenJoe Biden, who is far more experienced and knowledgeable about national and international politics than she is. Some women observers have made public appeals to Sarah Palin to withdraw from the race. It is unlikely that she would be allowed to do that by Senator McCain, because that would call into question his judgment for selecting her in the first place. No doubt McCain has taken a chance on her, and he is hoping that she may yet surprise everybody.

More important, the financial crisis took a turn for the worse as the $700 billion financial package put together by Treasury Secretary Henry PaulsonHenry Paulson encountered resistance from the Democrats and the Republicans.

But while the Democratic Party co-operated with the Republican administration to work out an acceptable package, the right-wing of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives revolted against the Bush-Paulson formula. Apart from objections to the "socialistic" content of some of the provisions, the far right Republicans felt that the Democrats were trying to reach an agreement before McCain could come and make his presence felt in order to deny him credit for any solution.

The public reaction to Senator McCain's gambit of announcing that he was suspending his campaigning, and suggesting that the first debate should be postponed, was quite negative because it created an impression that he might be getting cold feet or trying to play politics or both. I don't think Senator McCain was afraid -- after all he is a battle tested Senator, apart from being a battle tested veteran of the Vietnam war. Probably he was mending his fences with the right wing of his party.

In the end, Senator McCain did participate in the debate on September 26, which covered the financial crisis and foreign policy, and generally he held his own against Senator ObamaSenator Obama. But he could have done better. Apart from the fact that he made several missteps and misstatements during its encounter, he gave the impression some time that he was defending a lost cause by advocating low taxes and reduced expenditures at a time when the precarious economic situation required the infusion of federal funds to restore the economy on an even keel and to provide affordable health care to the American people.

Senator Obama maintained his composure throughout the debate and refused to be provoked. Nor did he say anything to provoke Senator McCain, which NYT columnist Maureen Dowd regretted in an Op Ed titled “Sound, but No Fury”. Observers have generally concluded that the debate was a draw, but as Senator McCain is trailing behind in the polls, he needed an outright victory.

Finally, an odd thing must be noted about this debate. Neither McCain nor Obama took a position on the $700 billion package that the United States Congress is in this process of adopting. This is one of the most important pieces of legislation to come before Congress in a very long time and yet neither presidential candidate was willing to take a clear stand on it. Discretion was in this case at least the better part of valor for both candidates