McCain's Homeownership Resurgence Plan

Although my assigned candidate is Barack Obama, I find the issue of failing mortgages and John McCain's Tuesday proposal and his campaign's subsequent elaboration too salient an issue when our classroom discussion is focusing on mass media use in campaigns.
It reads like a good story: the background is economic crisis sparked by exagerated lending terms and homeowners' inability to pay off their mortgages. The action proceeds with government hesitancy over and then approval of the $700b+ bailout package. Then, in the context of an intense political confrontation (Tuesday's debates), John McCain unveils his Homeownership Resurgence Plan, though in its rough form. He mentions the government buying up bad mortgages, a seeming bottom-up strategy to help the economy. The McCain campaign's website now has the plan as its front-page news item, providing the details that weren't presented Tuesday. It allows the government to buy up mortgages and replace them with fixed-rate mortgages that would keep people from defaulting.
From a communicative standpoint, the plan was botched. Uncertainty followed McCain's vague announcement during the debate (see "Critics call McCain housing plan 'half-baked'" at Politico.com), and pundits called it hasty, perplexing, and ambiguous. Even though the campaign's website has provided consistent updates, no wider announcements have been made, increasing the confusion surrounding the proposal.
This would have been a great opportunity for the McCain campaign to call a PRESS CONFERENCE as detailed in the chapter by Trent and Friedenburg. It was a situation that called for special attention immediately following the debate while people were still taken aback that such a serious policy had been so casually presented. Because of the topics newness, a variety of news sources would have been interested in giving McCain publicity. The campaign could have clarified its proposal, strengthened it, and responded to questions.
This was, unfortunately, a missed opportunity by the McCain campaign.