It's actually a potentially clever, if somewhat chickenshit, response to the current situation.

McCain knows he's going to be tarred with this debacle if he doesn't do something. Talk radio can blather all it wants about the roles of Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd, and Republicans can point to all the money Obama accepted from the stars of our recent dramas, but ultimately the established narrative holds that the Republicans are the party that represents the wealthy. It doesn't matter whether it is true, only that it carries quite a bit of popular currency. A campaign message that fits the existing narrative has a lot more intrinsic momentum than one that opposes it - think of 1988 and the picture of Dukakis riding in a tank, or of the Willie Horton ad, both of which played on existing perceptions that Democrats were soft on crime and out of touch with the military.

So McCain knows that the GOP, by virtue of pre-existing perceptions and of its unpopular current president, is the party more likely to take the political hit for this mess. Ideally, he would like to fix it; that would require knowing how, so that means he has to dial down his expectations to the next option, which is to give the appearance of at least trying to fix it. Thus, the "I'm too busy doing something to debate" line. The downside of this one is that people will point out that he doesn't really have any role in the relevant congressional committees, and that it is just political grandstanding; still, a lot of Americans won't be reading that far into the articles, so he is betting (as he has for some time now) on the essential laziness and stupidity of his countrymen to gain him some votes. The other potential risk is in the timing - right before the debate just makes it look like he's lost his nerve and been rattled by recent events. It's hard to say which way this curveball is going to break, but it doesn't look good for him right now.

Ultimately, I think this whole thing fits more with McCain's somewhat impulsive personality than with real desperation. He saw a potentially popular idea in Obama's behind-the-scenes offer of bipartisanship, and on the spur of the moment he decided not only to co-opt it, but to double down with his whole "Mr. McCain Goes to Washington" stratagem. It's a gamble, but he is a gambler at heart - and I think he has recognized that he is playing a poker hand in which there are an awful lot more cards in the deck that hurt him than there are those that will help him win.

I'm sure he sees some potential gain from this, but I don't. Best case scenario: the deal gets made Thursday (!) and McCain now has his name on a whopper that seems to infuriate most everyone. He becomes known as Mr. Big Government, friend to Wall Street fat cats, no longer the Washington shaker upper but the proven Washington insider. Nevertheless, the economy does NOT show a rapid improvement, so he doesn't get credit for that phenomenon. All he gets is "leadership," at the cost of his principles, his maverick stamp, his Republican small government mantra. . . . That's the good scenario.

Now what about the debate? He skips it and no one else does, and it does not get rescheduled? He shows up, having solved the crisis after a one-day suspension of his campaign and somehow does not look ridiculous for this one-day suspension, when Obama still manages to show up in Washington without the dramatics. Or he shows up despite his pledge not to, when the deal has not yet been made.

He had to be banking on Obama following suit and looking like the follower of the leader. Without Obama aping him, I just don't see any positive outcome for McCain, and I don't see any practical value either.

McCain is tanking in the polls and he is clearly out of his depth as a presidential candidate. Like a black jack player who has just about lost his shirt and doubles down, he's decided to risk everything on this ploy.

But most of the American people won't buy it. They could care less about strategy and game playing, they want real candidates with real solutions and they want sincerity. Since McCain is not on any of the financial or banking committees and has no particular expertise, he has nothing to contribute and will only be in the way.

No one likes to have their intelligence insulted and this is clearly what McC's ploy boils down to.

"I don't see it as a Hail Mary."

Let's call it what it is, then. It is a distraction. John McCain wants to distract us from his long record as an opponent of responsible financial oversight and regulation. McCain is one of the architects of this economic crisis.

Barack Obama just has to keep hammering on McCain's long record of opposing financial oversight and regulation. The voters need to be continually reminded that McCain is a fraud and a hypocrite.

I think the negative outcomes of this for him outweigh the positives, particularly since he has been doing his level best to demean, excoriate and otherwise piss off the media lately - in the past, they just might have lapped this idea up, coming from him.

Actually, I think the single best outcome for him might come from going to Washington, then using the visibility as a way to reclaim his "maverick" (snort) status by putting up a show of fighting the entrenched interests in both parties on behalf of "the little guy." It would be a difficult one to pull off, but that would be one way he could get around the essential ridiculousness you point out about the idea that a day or two spent in Washington is going to make such a crucial difference.

And yes, it is fairly insulting to even the remotely intelligent. But I think the whole "he's not on the relevant committees" angle is probably a bit too arcane to get through to Americans who are only vaguely informed about the political process (which is a pretty large number).

I think the reason most people will dismiss this as a stunt is just the timing - coming this close to the debate, it just looks like he's afraid to talk about the issues face-to-face and that he's chickening out.

c.f. "Lipstick on a pig," et al. He knows that the issues aren't really his friends right about now, so any way that he can get the spotlight onto a distraction - like in this case, focusing on campaign mechanics instead of actual issues - he'll seize on it. Obama is playing this one pretty well from what I've seen thus far; he just needs to keep his cool and, like you said, just keep hammering the point home. The nails are in the coffin, and he's just got to keep pounding until there's no way the vampire can get out again.