John McCain was forced to beat an undignified retreat from Washington yesterday after his audacious — possibly foolhardy — foray into the finely balanced congressional brokerage of a Wall Street bailout.

The Republican nominee fled to the relative sanctuary of a debate in Mississippi with Barack Obama, even though aides had previously suggested that he would not leave until a deal on the rescue plan was agreed.

Rarely, if ever, in all his 26 years as a member of Congress can Mr McCain have felt less welcome on Capitol Hill as Democrats queued up to attack his intervention. Chuck Schumer took to the Senate floor in the morning to say that President Bush should “respectfully tell Senator McCain to get out of town — he’s not helping”.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, said: “I think Senator McCain’s involvement is sort of a blip.” She said that Thursday’s White House meeting, called at his suggestion, had been “disruptive”.

Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Banking Committee, later declared: “Now that Senator McCain is safely in Mississippi we can get to serious work.”

As for Mr Obama, he was so cool he might have been auditioning for anti-perspirant advertisements, telling reporters: “My strong sense is that the best thing I can do, rather than inject presidential politics into these delicate negotiations is to go down to Mississippi.”

In vain did MCcain supporters insist that for all the talk of a deal before the White House meeting, there never was one. Joe Lieberman, the independent Democrat who is backing Mr McCain, was left railing against “the biggest lie” of the past 24 hours — the claim that the candidate’s intervention had wrecked negotiations.

Privately, even some of Mr McCain’s close advisers admitted that going to Washington had been a huge gamble by a candidate who has already ridden close to the rails with previous decisions, including his choice of Sarah Palin as running-mate.

When he arrived in the capital on Thursday, Mr McCain found himself caught in the crossfire of a war raging across three fronts — only one of which was his fight with Mr Obama. A palsied Bush Administration was struggling to get the deal it believed was needed to prevent catastrophe in the global economy, while Democrats and Republicans were battling for votes in November’s congressional elections.

Unusual alliances have been made. While most Senate Republicans joined the White House and a majority of Democrats in backing a modified bailout, those in the House — all of whom are up for re-election in November — conspired to thwart it.

Before his departure yesterday, Mr McCain met those in the House of Representatives revolting against the bailout. Some are motivated ideologically and have presented an insurance-based alternative that will cost less federal money. Others — under pressure from constituents — sensed an opportunity to distance themselves from both the Bush Administration and “big government Democrats”.

A few, as Democrats suspect, may even have thought that they were helping Mr McCain by setting him up to ride to the rescue. If so, that looked to have been too clever by half yesterday. Mr McCain’s message at the meeting was described by one Republican source as: “We need a deal. We need a deal. We need a deal.”

It is being suggested that so long as a “broad framework” of agreement is in place, he can still claim to have done a job. And yesterday some Republican rebels said they would not be “seen as obstructionists” provided at least party of the rescue deal was privately financed.

Roy Blunt, the Republican House whip, was dispatched to make peace with the Democrats who do not want to face voters in November “holding the bag” for the bailout deal.

“If they want to do this by themselves they can,” he said. “If they want to do this with us we are prepared to be a part of that negotiation, eager to have that negotiation.”

Mr McCain’s campaign, meanwhile, was busy pointing the finger at almost everybody else: “Americans saw a familiar spectacle in Washington. At a moment of crisis that threatened the economic security of American families, Washington played the blame game rather than work together.

“There was no deal on offer yesterday that had a majority of support in Congress. It is not enough to cut deals behind closed doors — especially when it amounts to thousands of dollars for every American family.”

His aides suggested that he might yet return to the capital to help negotiations and insisted that he had “listened to all sides so he could help focus the debate on finding a bipartisan resolution”.

Democrats, however, ridiculed Mr McCain’s performance in the White House meeting when, by all accounts, he said virtually nothing.

They say his “erratic, impulsive performance” through this bullish skirmish into the Washington china shop over the past week, has re-opened questions about his temperament — and which of the two candidates looks most presidential.

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