Re-election and Ideology

Scapegoats aside, Sarah Binder fingers the two causes for the demise of the bailout bill the day before yesterday: incumbents' concerns about losing their seats and ideological hardliners in safe seats on the left and right. Binder argues we shouldn't have been surprised at the results:

[T]he only reliable votes for the bailout came from the two-dozen or so House members about to retire. No electoral calculations for these folks; they followed their leaders’ pitch for the nation’s economic welfare. Or, their eyes were closely fixed on the plummeting Dow.

Stepping back to think about the debacle more broadly, in many ways the vote should have been far less surprising than it seemed. As Doug Arnold argued nearly twenty years ago in the Logic of Congressional Action, legislators are loathe to cast tough votes—unless leaders limit the traceability of those votes to make it harder to attribute blame for unpopular choices. With so many eyes on the vote to pass an untested package with a huge price tag, it is not surprising that party leaders were unable to corral their rank and file to pass the bill.

If Binder is right and the bailout meltdown was predictable, what does it say about John McCain's foresight or his potential to massage congressional action that in the 24 hour run-up to the vote he was taking credit for passage of a bailout bill that went down in flames?