This was one of the craziest stories this election I think. Senators Barack Obama and John McCain were working on a joint statement about the economy when all of the sudden McCain says he’s suspending his campaign to go to Washington and work on the bailout plan. I don’t know if this has ever happened before, but it seems like a pretty extreme move.
Of course, the GOP hails it as a great and selfless move to save the American economy, and the Democratic party says it’s political pandering.
I feel like it’s hard to see this one as a selfless move, everything in a campaign is a calculated political move, just as I’m sure everything Obama does on the trail is carefully considered and calculated. Not to mention there were a few things I found particularly fishy about the move
First, McCain quickly mentioned suspending the debate and reshcudling to…drumroll please…the date of the VP debates, why would he suggest that unless he wanted for some reason to reshcudle the VP debates? I’m sure Sarah Palin, even if she is ready to go toe to toe with Biden, would benifit from more time and preperation.
Also, McCain said he would only come to the debates if there was a plan in place before he left, but clearly he did attend the debates, and there is not a plan in place, and how helpful he was while in washington is also debated.
This blogger sums it up well, it was a resonable move for McCain since he was loosing ground in the polls, particularly because of the economy, and this may have stopped that slide some, then if Obama followed him it looked like..well…Obama was following him. Overall I’m not sure how much good it did though.
