Campaign 2008From The Trail
NBC/National Journal embed reporters file regular dispatches on their experiences from the trail.

Previously in this series:

• Biden Preps For Careful Confrontation With Palin (09/30/08)
• Lots Of Talk, Few Answers On The Economy (09/29/08)
• For Palin At U.N., The Image Of Access (09/24/08)

Read The Entire Series

DES MOINES, Iowa -- At the time John McCain decided to toss himself into the middle of negotiations over the Wall Street bailout legislation [PDF] last week, only four Republicans in the House of Representatives openly supported the bill. Or at least that's what former Ohio Rep. Rob Portman said after the bill failed to pass on Monday, pointing to the 65 members who eventually voted for the bill as proof of McCain's influence.

"I think it's remarkable that we were able to make it from four Republicans who were openly in support of the proposal at the time Senator McCain went to town to 65, 66," Portman said. McCain "made great progress, and it was along with some changes to the legislation, including the amount of money that was going to be provided up front, including some of the transparency he talked about -- all things that he was promoting."

Portman, who has been helping the GOP nominee prepare for his next debate with Barack Obama, acknowledged that McCain wasn't the only one who could take credit for dragging the bill so close to victory. But, as a former congressman and former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Bush, Portman could speak with some authority about why such an important bill had failed.

"Everybody from my area of Ohio voted no," Portman said. "And you know why they voted no? Because people out there are very frustrated and angry, and it takes leadership to vote yes on something like this, particularly if you're representing a fiscally conservative district, as a lot of Republicans do."

"As people were joking," Portman said, "this was a 50-50 vote. Fifty percent of the calls were saying no and 50 percent were saying heck no, or hell no."

Despite polling that appeared to back up Portman's anecdotal assessment of public opinion, McCain decided last week to "suspend" his campaign and wade into the issue. The politically safe move, according to one McCain adviser, would have been for both presidential candidates to oppose the bill while quietly hoping for its passage.

Having announced he was returning to Washington to deal with the crisis, McCain reached out to House Republicans, one of the few avenues available to him to influence the negotiations. Many House Republicans felt cut out of the ongoing talks, and their support was clearly vital for passage of the bill, especially given that they provided political cover for wary Democrats, most of whom supported the bill but were nervous to pass it along party lines.

After being interviewed by Katie Couric for the "CBS Evening News" Wednesday night and speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative the next morning, McCain flew back to Washington, where he attended a Senate Republicans luncheon and met with House Minority Leader John Boehner. He then traveled to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue for a summit at the White House that included President Bush, Obama and congressional leaders.

On Thursday, McCain spent roughly five hours dealing with the struggling negotiations on-site before granting three network television interviews and heading home. On Friday, he spent slightly less than two hours at the Capitol, where he once again met with Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell before heading to Mississippi for the first presidential debate.

While McCain was away from Congress, campaign staffers assured reporters, he was working the phones, calling legislators in an attempt to gauge support and ease tensions. According to a spokesperson for the campaign, McCain left the Thursday afternoon meeting at the White House "understanding that he needed to go back to the drawing board, work the phones, build a consensus, try to get a Republican negotiator in place" so that a compromise could be reached. "Meeting face to face with people is always more effective than phoning it in," the spokesperson said.

McCain echoed this point during a rally in Bexley, Ohio, on Monday, before the legislation collapsed in the House. McCain accused his opponent of failing to lead on the crisis, and said that it wasn't his style to "simply 'phone it in.'"

"It's a matter of record Senator Obama took a very different approach to the crisis our country faced," McCain said. "At first, at first he didn't want to get involved. And then he was 'monitoring the situation.' That's not leadership, that's watching from the sidelines."

Yet after rushing back from the debate on Friday evening and arriving in Washington before dawn on Saturday morning, McCain spent most of the day at his campaign headquarters, where a senior campaign adviser said he could "effectively do what he needs to do by phone."

Throughout this whole ordeal, Obama was able to take a more cautious, wait-and-see approach as his party hammered out the details with the White House. He avoided the risk of attaching his name to the politically dangerous legislation by allowing his Democratic colleagues in Congress to drive the negotiations.

By all accounts, McCain left Washington on Monday morning optimistic that the bill would pass. His senior advisor, Steve Schmidt, spoke of its passage in the past tense on Sunday's "Meet the Press," and on Monday morning before voting began, McCain bragged about being a man of action.

"I am a Teddy Roosevelt Republican," McCain said. "I believe our leaders belong in the arena when our country faces a challenge, not on the road in a campaign. And I've never been afraid of stepping in to solve problems for the American people, and I'm not going to stop now."

But by traveling to Washington and tying himself so closely to the success of the bailout negotiations, McCain has exposed himself to more political risk. If he was so ready to bask in the glow of the bill's success, how much of the blame will he receive for its failure?