It's the Economy, Stupid

One thing we learned last night is that Sen. McCain finally gets that. But what about his "plan."

Sen. McCain's one bid to insert a new element in the debate was a $300 billion plan to buy the mortgages of troubled homeowners and replace them with payment regimes the homeowners can afford. Sen. Obama's campaign later noted that the Treasury Department was granted such power by the financial-rescue law signed last week, and that Sen. Obama brought up such a step two weeks ago, as the New York Times reports. The paper also cites the McCain campaign saying that the idea was recently proposed by Hillary Clinton and originally came from a Depression-era New Deal agency. And like most other ideas last night, it was channeled through campaign dynamics that have become familiar, including Sen. Obama's efforts to tie Sen. McCain to an unpopular President Bush and Sen. McCain's efforts to distance himself from the fellow Republican he would succeed. "It's my proposal," Sen. McCain said about the plan, as the Journal notes. "It's not Sen. Obama's proposal; it's not President Bush's proposal."