From the Wall Street Journal’s “Washington Wire” today (notes added):

The two presidential campaigns have issued competing timelines of events today leading up to McCain’s call to cancel the debates. Here is Obama’s version:

“At 8:30 this morning, Senator Obama called Senator McCain to ask him if he would join in issuing a joint statement outlining their shared principles and conditions for the Treasury proposal and urging Congress and the White House to act in a bipartisan manner to pass such a proposal. At 2:30 this afternoon, Senator McCain returned Senator Obama’s call and agreed to join him in issuing such a statement. The two campaigns are currently working together on the details.”

Shortly after, the McCain campaign released their version:

“Senator Obama phoned Senator McCain at 8:30 am this morning but did not reach him. The topic of Senator Obama’s call to Senator McCain was never discussed [1]. Senator McCain was meeting with economic advisers and talking to leaders in Congress throughout the day prior to calling [2] Senator Obama. At 2:30 pm, Senator McCain phoned Senator Obama and expressed deep concern that the plan on the table would not pass as it currently stands. He asked Senator Obama to join him in returning to Washington to lead a bipartisan effort [4] to solve this problem.”

Translator’s notes:

[1]: “Never discussed”: If Obama did not reach McCain, nothing was discussed. Note that the following is equally true, though understandably the McCain camp chose not to include it in their press release: “A McCain plan to withdraw from the race and apologize for his repeated lies was not discussed.”
[2]: “prior to calling”: Before 2:30, but in all likelihood, not at 8:30, when Obama phoned with the joint statement idea, or the McCain statement would have been specific. Had the McCain camp been cleverer, they wouldn’t have mentioned the exact time of the call at all, because the single mention draws attention to the later non-mention.
[3]: “lead a bipartisan effort”: Here is the McCain camp’s best use of rhetoric in the release. (“Best”, of course, is relative, and does not imply lack of sleaze.) They have rhetorically taken Obama’s good idea (“issuing a joint statement”), kept the concept (“<verb> joint <good thing>”), and concocted a replacement readers might believe is theirs (“lead a bipartisan effort”). The indefinite article “a” emphasizes that there was no earlier mention of a bipartisan effort, and it may be true there wasn’t. But McCain surely knew at this point that Obama had suggested a joint statement, and I bet they talked about it. 

So this is the likely sequence of events:

  • Obama called McCain at 8:30 am.
  • McCain hears the phone ring, sees it’s Obama, and lets the call go to voice mail. There’s no conversation.
  • McCain listens to the voice mail and knows that Obama came up with a good idea before him (McCain).
  • Later on, McCain has a few meetings and phone calls.
  • At 2:30pm, McCain called Obama, who answered.
  • McCain and Obama discuss doing something together.
  • Obama’s camp issues a press release about all this.
  • McCain’s camp reads the Obama press release. They immediately realize how damaging it would be to ignore, since it hits them hard: Obama had a good idea, and first; McCain didn’t answer an 8:30 call, so where was he?; and regarding any bipartisanship between the candidates, Obama is in control and decisive.
  • The McCain team scrambles its writers, and “shortly” afterwards, they issue their own press release crafted to address the strong points of the Obama release as fast as they can. They choose not to lie outright. (You can get in trouble when you make up lies in a hurry.)

The Journal, which is no way “in the tank” for Obama, is appropriately cynical.