Senator McCain has also asked for Senator Barack Obama to follow his lead in suspending the campaign so that the two could return to Washington and work on a plan to help the ailing American economy. As part of the suspension, McCain has asked that Friday's planned presidential debate also be postponed.
The Arizona Senator had this to say to New York Reporters: "I am calling on the president to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself. It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem."
This announcement comes only hours before President Bush is scheduled to address the nation on the troubled state of the U.S. financial system. The Bush administration has proposed a whopping $700 billion dollar bailout, a proposal that has been met with a tepid response at best (and outright hostility in the blogosphere).
Like everything else in this election, response has been mixed. Commenter Ripley from the FoxNews website says:
- This is incredible. Now THAT’S what I call Presidential. Good for him. Obviously ONE of the candidates cares what happens to this country, even to his own detriment.
Over at Crooks and Liars, Silent Patriot sees the move as nothing but calculated politics:
- It’s important to note how erratic the McCain campaign is. Chalk it up to whatever you like, but McCain has gone from “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” to “we have to suspend the campaign and delay the debates in order to deal with the greatest economic crisis since WWII” in about a week.
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Re: Today On Channel C: McCain Bails
By Todd Williams, September 24, 2008 at 23:26In another disastrously beautiful election year, one full of war, floods, fires, and media menagerie, we can see how John McCain just might need a break. I mean, it's hard to let your medical records go up for examination for three hours, assuring that no one has the ability to record them. Secondly, he had to postpone his convention to let the public in the United States know that the Republicans care about hurricane victims in election years, at least this year the waves did not spoil his birthday.
As an agent of change, Senator McCain needs to be a maverick and do things that no other candidate would think of doing, like postponing a debate out of genuine care for the American people. I can point out the words of John McCain's colleague, fellow Arizona senator Jon Kyl, who said "...you know John. He's willing to take big risks if he thinks it's for a big cause."
I do believe that Senator McCain thinks that this is a big cause. The cause of his campaign. The cause of forcing us to ignore the ignorance of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin on foreign policy issues, the cause of shallowly attempting to better his poll numbers by feigning a flying fuck about the people of the United States, the cause, indeed, of pushing not his ideas but the idea that he's the first to hold them into the public sphere. An idea which is, in fact, not true.
The Obama camp has already declined the invitation to postpone this debate, and the candidate may very well be demonized for this as he was for not visiting troops in Germany. Yes, there will be swift-boating once again. However, once the debate is held, once the dust is cleared, we will see Candidate McCain as a bat with clipped wings.