John McCain in Die Hard (2008)
Secretary Paulson at the Treasury Deparment and Chairman Bernanke at the Federal Reserve moved swiftly with Congress to craft and enact legislation designed to bail out Wall Street and banking industry, while including provisions that would bolster and expand groups like ACORN, the grievance enforcers in the housing industry. In short order they agreed in principle to a plan that would cover all their butts, ie. Wall Street, Capitol Hill, the Federal Reserve, the Bush Administration and even ACORN, just not the taxpayer who would be footing the bill. Nor was any mention was made of reforming the Communities Reinvestment Act which had forced the lending institutions into making the risky loans in the first place.
Enter John McCain.
Hearing, while out on the campaign trail, that the Republican House members were being “railroaded” and shut out of the negotiations, and after being contacted by one of the Republican leaders, Lindsey Graham, McCain suspended his campaign and returned to Washington. When the House Republicans filled him in on their reservations to the bailout, McCain allowed the House Minority Leader, John Boehner, to air those reservations in a meeting that he urged President Bush to convene between all the major players. Once the Republican position became known, the meeting which Barack Obama was supposed to be leading, quickly degenerated into a shouting match by Democrats against the Republicans for refusing to go along, “for the good of the country”. Even though the Democrats did not need the Republican votes for passage of the bill, since they control both the House and the Senate, they needed to make it seem like a “bipartisan” bill in order to deflect the backlash from their constituents they knew would be coming, especially if how the crisis came about actually ever became known.
The Democratic leadership were livid and complained publicly how John McCain had inserted “political partisanship” into the process, even though he actually had said very li