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McCain says, "This goes further than politics." He reaches out to Obama. Media attention suddenly forgets about his absurd thirst for Chris Cox's blood. Now, the media is talking about how McCain initiated a rise above campaign smears. So long to that line about "McCain Is Running A Filthy Lying Campaign." Symbolically speaking, McCain wins the news cycle today. Any possible campaign stops he'd have over the next few days wouldn't have yielded the kind of press he's going to get for doing this.

Here's a question: Will Obama and McCain be able to broker some kind of an agreement? I think probably not, at least not without some painful compromises. This might be an opportunity for the McCain pundits, though, to point out that in a crisis like this, Obama has no experience playing quarterback on legislation. Dems wouldn't be able to respond. They'd have to argue that any experience McCain has doing this is somehow bad. But generally speaking, those times when McCain has been the man behind a piece of legislation, it has only benefitted Democrats. So they wouldn't have anything to knock.

Dems would probably do well to put their economic advisers on the airwaves without mentioning the campaign. Show off the team, the people surrounding Obama. They won't get anywhere preaching on Obama's experience on economic matters, so show that he has good judgment in who he listens to. Maybe they can play up his "work" in fighting poverty, but that could potentially backfire.