Backroom Dealing

This is what happens when your campaign is run by lobbyists.

The document posted and e-mailed by the McCain campaign on Tuesday night says at the end of its first full paragraph: “Lenders in these cases must recognize the loss that they’ve already suffered.”

So the government would buy the mortgages at a discounted rate, reflecting the declining value of the mortgage paper.

But when McCain reissued the document on Wednesday, that sentence was missing, to the dismay of many conservatives.

That would mean the U.S. would pay face value for the troubled documents, which was the main reason Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) gave for opposing the plan.

Mortgage lenders didn't like that sentence, so out it went. Now the plan is to subsidize banks for giving out bad loans, keeping homeowners and taxpayers with the bill. For all his talk of deploring the "backroom dealing" in Washington, it appears Mr. McCain made a backroom deal behind closed doors.

And the Obama campaign is all over this. It's hard to explain how by paying face value for homes, lenders won't be taking a haircut on bad loans and taxpayers will suffer, in the space of 30 seconds, but they do an admirable job:



Finally, McCain comes forward with a vaguely populist policy and it blows up in his face.

...meanwhile, the McCain campaign has continued their ban on discussing William Ayers by releasing a 90-second Web video about him.