What really happened the day John McCain suspended his campaign
Henry Paulson, George Bush’s treasury secretary, has a new book out, describing his role in the government’s attempt to control the financial meltdown last year. The Wall Street Journal today prints an excerpt.
It’s about the day John McCain, Underdog-like, brought his presidential campaign to a halt and returned to Washington to save the day.
McCain himself has said economics isn’t his strong suit; the tale as Paulson tells is correspondingly comedic. He first describes his worry that the abrupt arrival of McCain would unravel the work the administration had done to get both sides to agree on the steps he felt the country needed to make to avert a complete disaster.
It reminds us again that Bush, his advisers and congress were already working to cope with the mess; they didn’t exactly need a political peacock with no economics background to help.
And remember that Paulson is a Republican.
Anyway, here’s his account of what happened at the summit McCain called for:
Obama and the Democrats were skillfully setting up the story line that McCain’s intervention had polarized the situation and that Republicans were walking away from an agreement. It was brilliant political theater that was about to degenerate into farce. Skipping protocol, the president turned to McCain to offer him a chance to respond: “I think it’s fair that I give you the chance to speak next.”
But McCain demurred. “I’ll wait my turn,” he said. It was an incredible moment, in every sense. This was supposed to be McCain’s meeting—he’d called it, not the president, who had simply accommodated the Republican candidate’s wishes. Now it looked as if McCain had no plan at all — his idea had been to suspend his campaign and summon us all to this meeting. It was not a strategy, it was a political gambit, and the Democrats had matched it with one of their own.
[…]
Decorum started to evaporate as the meeting broke into multiple side conversations with people talking over each other. […]
Finally, raising his voice over the din, Obama said loudly, “I’d like to hear what Senator McCain has to say, since we haven’t heard from him yet.”
The room went silent and all eyes shifted to McCain, who sat quietly in his chair, holding a single note card. He glanced at it quickly and proceeded to make a few general points. He said that many members had legitimate concerns and that I had begun to head in the right direction on executive pay and oversight. He mentioned that Boehner was trying to move his caucus the best he could and that we ought to give him the space to do that. He added he had confidence the consensus could be reached quickly.
As he spoke, I could see Obama chuckling. McCain’s comments were anticlimactic, to say the least. His return to Washington was impulsive and risky, and I don’t think he had a plan in mind.
6:49 PM
The Pat Tillman movie
Variety says the Weinstein brothers have bought the distribution rights at Sundance to The Tillman Story, a documentary on the life, death and aftermath of the former Cardinals quarterback safety:
Distrib’s [sic] snagged North American, U.K., Australia and New Zealand rights on docu “The Tillman Story,” the military death exposé about NFL player Pat Tillman, helmed by Amir Bar-Lev and written by Mark Monroe (“The Cove”). “Tillman” is produced by John Battsek of Passion Pictures.
The Weinstein Company, run by the brothers Bob and Harvey, is the organization the pair formed after leaving Miramax behind at Disney. The story says it will hit theaters later this year.
Says IndieWire:
“What they said happened, didn’t happen,” Pat Tillman’s mother, Mary, says early on in “The Tillman Story,” “They made up a story, so you have to set the record straight.”
Mystery surrounded the passing of Tillman after he was killed in Afghanistan in 2004, sparking a Congressional investigation into the cause of the pro football player’s death. He was awarded the U.S. military’s Silver Star for dying in the line of enemy fire, but facts later revealed that he was killed by friendly fire. The film takes a broader look at Tillman’s life and the often conflicting accounts of his death, including a tug-of-war between the U.S. military and his own family as the facts surrounding the incident are revealed.
11:10 PM
PHXated hearts Laurie Roberts
… and we don’t care who knows it.
Roberts, the Republic columnist, has been all over an ongoing scandal out of Maricopa County probate court; certain people who have the bad luck to come under the supposed protection of the court have apparently would up with their estates drained of money by what seems to be high legal and care fees.
As you can imagine, what the certain people have in common is sizable chunks of money, or did until they were put under government protection.
The poster child of this has been Marie Long, who had a stroke in 2005. At the time she was worth $1.3 million. Now she’s broke and about to be evicted from her nursing home.
One of Roberts’ several columns on Long is here.
Today, Roberts had details on another probate court case, about a 49-year-old guy, Edward Ravenscroft, whose drug addictions got him in big legal trouble. Now, Ravenscroft is lucky; a lot of folks arrested for possession three times would be in prison. Fortunately for him, he’s a pharmaceuticals heir supposedly worth $5 million.
According to Roberts, felicitous circumstances like this — rich folks coming under the care of the probate court — triggers certain arrangemens:
In January 2009, attorney Paul Theut was named Ravenscroft’s guardian-ad-litem and within a month Theut asked that Sun Valley Group be brought in to oversee the millionaire’s estate. Ravenscroft, he wrote, cannot manage his affairs due to drug and mental-health issues and “has property that will be wasted or dissipated unless proper management is provided.”
So they proceeded to manage it for him.
According to court records, Theut collected $62,000 of Ravenscroft’s money in his first 3½ months as GAL. Larry Scaringelli was appointed his attorney after Commissioner Michael Hintze rejected Ravenscroft’s own choice of a lawyer. (Being the one to foot the bill, Ravenscroft thought he ought to have some say in the matter.) Scaringelli collected nearly $33,000 in his first five months. Sun Valley and the Maricopa County public fiduciary, which is Ravenscroft’s guardian, haven’t disclosed their take.
Neither Scaringelli nor Theut returned calls to explain their bills.
Ravenscroft is now locked out of his own house and is living on a friends couch. He tells Roberts that the charges now exceed a half-million dollars.
Roberts’ blog is one of the better ones in town. Here she is on some recent antics in the state legislature:
Apparently, all the state’s problems have been solved because Senate Appropriations Chairman Russell Pearce, one of the Legislature’s key members, has introduced a bill mandating that the state hang a copy of the Ten Commandments at the entrance to the state Capitol.
This is, of course, fantastic news for tens of thousands of Arizona’s children, who I’m guessing now won’t be summarily tossed out of the state’s health-care plan for the poor. And it must mean that our leaders have found a way to fully fund Child Protective Services so that the little children — the ones we could save if we fully funded the agency — won’t have to suffer.
1:40 AM