Brief programming note: Because of Rosh Hashanah, I am joining the great Exodus to the New Jersey suburbs for the holiday. (If you're wondering about my surname, and people do, my dad was a Polish Catholic and my mom's a Sephardic Jew from Morocco.) I'm going to go dip some things in honey—like maybe my 401k statements—and see you back here tomorrow. L'Shana Tova!

In the postmortems of the failure yesterday of the Congressional bill to right the credit markets, I'm noticing a repeated refrain: representatives voted against it because their constituents hated it, and their constituents hated it because they didn't understand the consequences.

But if that's true, isn't there someone at fault besides voters and their elected representatives? Say, for instance, the mainstream business press who might have made those consequences plain?

Specifically, couldn't they have better answered the simple question: What are we getting (or more important, avoiding) for $700 billion?

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1. Let's be fair: John McCain and Sarah Palin weren't claiming that a question from a voter was "gotcha journalism." They were claiming that for Katie Couric to have the temerity to take Palin's answer to a voter seriously was "gotcha journalism." That, of course, makes all the difference.

2. Should the McCain-Palin camp—given the drubbing Palin received after her solo interview last week—have considered having Palin do this interview solo to try to redeem herself? (If, that is, CBS were interested in changing the arrangement.) It's true that this interview was actually scheduled some time ago. So it's not, in that sense, as if McCain decided to chaperone his running mate to keep her out of trouble. But to the casual news viewer—who saw the Couric interview, or maybe just the SNL skit—it sure is likely to look that way.

3. Can we all agree now that shielding Palin from the press was a serious mistake? By limiting her to a handful of high-profile interviews, the campaign made each one into an Olympics-like event, magnifying any failure. McCain-Palin have complained that there's a double standard over Joe Biden's gaffes. But without getting into the nature of Biden's gaffes or what they say about his knowledge and preparation as opposed to Palin's, the big difference is that he makes so freaking many of them—at a certain point, they tend to wash each other out and cease being news. Fair or not, it's a simple fact of the media that any campaign should be aware of. Maybe the solution for Sarah Palin is: more gaffes!

Update: 4. It occurs to me, by the way, that some of Biden's gaffes—on clean coal, on the McCain-can't-use-a-computer ad—have been of much the same nature as Palin's Pakistan statement, in that they contradicted the guy at the top of the ticket. There's a reasonable way to answer gaffes like that: "We're two people; no one agrees on everything; but [Sen. McCain/Obama] is the one running for President, and he will call the shots in our administration." Or you can avoid the whole issue and say it's all the media's fault, and see how well that works for you.

[Another update: Because it's come up a couple of times in the comments: I am emphatically not saying that Biden's and Palin's gaffes—and I'm using the term very broadly—are equivalent, either in kind or in what they say about the two candidates and their qualifications. As I said in comments, that's another post altogether, and one that I would think people don't want the TV critic's opinion on. But I do think it's true as a practical matter, whether anyone likes it or not, that the more one speaks—and screws up—on camera, the more people get inured to it. Whereas if you put your candidate out once a week, it blasts a floodlight on her every word.]

I don't have time to gin up separate full-fledged posts on How I Met Your Mother or Heroes from last night, so while there's nothing really spoilery in the following post, avert your eyes if you're nervous about that sort of thing.

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A quick note that the better-than-ever Chuck and the pretty-much-same-as-always Life both return to NBC tonight (if you haven't already seen them online). See my take on their return engagements here.

This is not The Curious Capitalist, but the Congressional bailout bill has failed and the Dow is fluctuating between 500 and 600 points down. (As I noted in my Tina Fey post below: Sarah Palin, time to suspend your campaign!)

My only insight: the most frightening thing about CNBC's coverage is that Jim Cramer is calm.

I stuck with straight-ahead news-channel carriage of the debates for my liveblog Friday night, so I didn't have a chance to check out the broadcast on Al Gore's Current TV, which included "tweets" from Twitter by Current viewers. But Current PR was helpful enough to send some along:

*McCain was afraid to make eye contact with Obama
*Wall Street vs. Main Street. How many times will we hear that tonight?
*This is the coolest way to watch a debate ever
*The candidates seem afraid of each other tonight
*Generic debate so far. They won't even look at each other.
*We owe China $500M because they fund our war and stock our shelves at Wal-Mart
*McCain is a leader. Obama is an organizer. End of discussion. We need a leader.
*U.S. respect abroad is the major security issue, Obama get's it, McCain doesn't!
*ha ha ha McCain is so funny. His jokes are just like my grandpa's.
*Let the debates begin! :-O Too bad David Letterman couldn't be the facilitator.
*McCain rocking the blue suit.
*Both are merely stating the obvious...do they have the same writers?
*Yes, we know you've "been around a while", McCain.
*McCain has also been to Georgia. Also, Siam. And Byzantium.

And finally, the inarguable:

*Can't wait for Palin/Biden - that will rock

A scad of new and returning programming last night. Were you digging Dexter? Amazed by Race? Bowled over by Britain? Taken by Tim? Supercaliflabbergasted by Californication?

Let's hope Sarah Palin was watching this one with the sound off too. Tina Fey, playing Palin, and Amy Poehler, playing Katie Couric's eyelashes, reprised SNL's satire of the Vice presidential candidate Saturday night, capping off a week of bad media for the nominee.

It wasn't the show-stopper that Fey's first Palin skit was, but it did take the wicked tack of blending Palin's actual interview answers into the script. If you saw the interview, it took a moment, as Fey's Palin disappeared into the tundra on that meandering answer on the bailout, to figure where Real Palin ended and Parody Palin began.

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AMC

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, put on "Candle in the Wind' and watch last night's Mad Men.

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