McCain said he was taking these unprecedented steps in any modern presidential campaign in order to return to Washington and "fix the problem" of the potentially catastrophic financial crisis looming over the United States.

Was he motivated by gamesmanship, showmanship or statesmanship? Perhaps all three: For they're all quintessential elements of John McCain.

As he did when he picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, McCain is showing an extraordinarily unconventional boldness in proposing unconventional ways to deal with unprecedented crises. It is ironic that the 46-year-old Obama, more than a quarter-century younger, has been defined in his approach to the crisis by an exceptionally timid and yet continuing partisan reiteration of Democratic Party orthodoxies.

But McCain was forced to act by his own complacency and contradictory policies about the crisis. He has retained former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, as his chief economic adviser, even though Gramm was a driving force behind the 1998 legislation that scrapped 65 years of successful federal supervision and safeguards imposed on the financial markets to prevent precisely the kind of catastrophe we are seeing now. Ironically, McCain himself was one of only eight senators who wisely and courageously opposed the 1998 scrapping of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act.

But today, McCain, after a surprise comeback, is falling badly behind Obama in the presidential campaign precisely because he, like the Republican Party and the conservative movement in general, appears confused and bewildered by the crisis, with no idea whatsoever what to do about it.

McCain, therefore, certainly needed to do something bold to appear engaged and decisive on the economy. Yet the irony is that the toughest sell for the Bush-Paulson-Bernanke rescue package at the moment is not the partisan Democrats in Congress, who on principle always favor more federal intervention or control in the economy, but the Republicans in Congress.

Yet it was Republican President George W. Bush whose policies over the past eight years have now brought the United States to the brink of ruin. But there is enough blame to go around for everyone. For Bush was supported in his profligate spending, minimum interest rates and mad international borrowing policies by a totally supine and financially illiterate Republican Congress for six years and by an equally complacent and inactive Democratic one for the past two.

The president was scheduled to meet Thursday with congressional leaders and both presidential candidates to address the legislation package, which is being modified to meet public concerns.

Bush spoke to the American people Wednesday about the crisis and -- predictably -- accepted no personal blame or responsibility for it whatsoever. Equally telling, it was the first speech in his nearly eight years in the White House that he has ever devoted entirely to economic issues. It seems a bit late in the day to be starting now.

Bush, in fact, has abdicated responsibility for this crisis from the very beginning. He has left Treasury Secretary Henry "Hank" Paulson to serve as effective acting president throughout the crisis with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as the nation's "real" vice president rather than the suddenly almost invisible Dick Cheney.

The irony is that the toughest sell for the Bush-Paulson-Bernanke team at the moment is the Republicans in Congress, who were largely unmoved by Cheney's appeals to them earlier in the week.

There are certainly many questions in Congress about the proposed rescue plan. And any free market, conservative Republican who takes those ideas seriously has to hate it like blazes.

But the answer to such people is a devastating one: However much they may hate the plan -- which has been proposed and made inevitable by a president they adored and mindlessly followed, suppressing all hint of criticism for eight years, there really is no alternative left.

If the Republicans in Congress sit on the plan, and the fiscal catastrophe that Paulson and Bernanke have warned then happens, as seems all too likely, then the conservative free market Republican Party will not be out of office for two or four or even eight years, it will be eternally obliterated from the face of the Earth.

It still seems extremely likely that the emergency legislation will pass. But if the Republicans in Congress in particular bicker and prevaricate too long before biting the bullet, they will vastly increase the dangers of fiscal collapse. Of course, if the package goes through, but international investors balk at funding the virtually bankrupt U.S. government, ruin will crash down at lightning speed anyway.

McCain and Obama both now face the challenge of rising to the national crisis. The fate of the nation may hinge on whether they can.