McCain announced today that he wants to postpone the debate scheduled for Friday, and “suspend his campaign” to go back to Washington and help on a Wall Street rescue plan. Now this may seem like a good idea, and I admit after reading the article it’s not as bad as it looks in the headlines, but something is just way off here. This sudden urge to do something to help seems a little out of left field from McCain, who told reporters at the beginning of the year that, “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.”
The economy has been in terrible shape since before the democrats had a ticket worked out and now McCain decides that, effective the day before the first presidential debate, he will suspend his campaign and head back to Washington? Why? There are plenty of leaders on Capitol Hill who are willing to help and aren’t running for president. Some of them actually know a little something about economics.
While McCain’s idea to work on this financial crisis is intriguing, the fact that he thinks that setting aside a few hours on Friday night is out of the question is absurd. Memo: Multi-tasking is a much-needed skill in the job of president. To me this shows that McCain’s idea to squeeze in “off the cuff” debate prep whenever he can while continuing to campaign might have backfired. He won in his battles to focus the first debate on foreign policy and se t up a bigger stage for vice-presidential candidates, hoping to ride in on his Trojan horse Sarah Palin; and Barack Obama went along with it all, basically saying “Whenever, wherever, however you want to do this thing, let’s do it.” So what is McCain’s next step? “Ummmm…let’s not do this.”
This article appears in Sep 23-30, 2008.
