I found this article about John McCain’s campaign to be very interesting. It starts out discussing a meeting they had about how to respond to the financial crisis. What’s interesting is that his campaign’s emphasis appears to be on what will be best for his political prospects and his election, instead of what’s best for the country. It’s the start of a huge financial crisis, the country needs leadership and a good solution, and McCain, whose campaign slogan is ‘Country First’, is trying to make the decision that will best help his campaign instead of his country. Here’s part of the beginning of the article:

The meeting was to focus on how McCain should respond to the crisis — but also, as one participant later told me, “to try to see this as a big-picture, leadership thing.”

As this participant recalled: “We presented McCain with three options. Continue offering principles from afar. A middle ground of engaging while still campaigning. Then the third option, of going all in. The consensus was that we could stay out or go in — but that if we’re going in, we should go in all the way. So the thinking was, do you man up and try to affect the outcome, or do you hold it at arm’s length? And no, it was not an easy call.”

Discussion carried on into the afternoon at the Morgan Library and Museum as McCain prepared for the first presidential debate. Schmidt pushed for going all in: suspending the campaign, recommending that the first debate be postponed, parachuting into Washington and forging a legislative solution to the financial crisis for which McCain could then claim credit. Exactly how McCain could convincingly play a sober bipartisan problem-solver after spending the previous few weeks garbed as a populist truth teller was anything but clear. But Schmidt and others convinced McCain that it was worth the gamble.

Schmidt in particular was a believer in these kinds of defining moments.