A textbook case of “judgment” in action.

Much of this election will be about character and judgment. Both the Republicans and the Democrats are running one candidate who doesn’t have much of a track record. So we will need to see how they react during the campaign to decide how they will react once in office.

There are a few cases that mean a lot. For example, Obama beat Hillary during the primary largely on the strength of his superior ability to put together a successful campaign team. Correct decisions Obama made about how to deploy them turned out to be crucial. Bill Clinton admitted as much earlier this week during a televison interview, “Barack Obama has an excellent campaign organization … as I found out during the primary.” And the Clintons have legendary skills of their own in that field. That’s an even more amazing achievement especially since he had to do it right the first time he has ever tried it.

There’s another case unfolding before our eyes right now.

McCain made the judgement that he was ‘needed’ back in Washington to help create a solution to the current banking crisis. Obama made a completely different judgment, “It’s important not to inject presidential politics into this,” he said. “My preference is to use the phone … in a way that’s not a photo op because I think that sometimes prevents things from getting done.”

Bush will still be President until January (~sigh!~) and McCain is the closest thing Bush has to an ally right now. So Bush called a magnificent photo op meeting in the White House. Reports from the meeting now reveal that what happened was exactly what Obama predicted. And the fireworks came from McCain’s own side of the fence, the right-wing Republicans. Another thing this shows is how little control McCain actually has over them.

McCain does have a much longer track record to look at and the “judgment” issue doesn’t look good. He seems to have long standing emotional issues that go back to his days in the Naval Academy (where he ranked 5th from the bottom, largely due to demerits he received for bad behavior). He nearly lost a naval aircraft through “daredevil clowning” (by his own admission, back in the days when he told the truth every now and then). And he’s well known for losing his temper in the Senate on a regular basis. Even the selection of Governor Palin as a VP candidate has all the hallmarks of a last minute impulse decision because he couldn’t get his own way and pick Lieberman. (Remember, in contrast to Obama’s campaign, the Republican party, not McCain, controls most of the money on their side of the fence. The party could simply decide to spend it on state and congressional races instead.)

If we don’t get some kind of solution to this crisis, we’ll all end up paying the price for McCain’s lack of judgment– even though he’s not elected.