McCain suspends campaign to go back to Washington to deal with the current economic crisis.
I find this politics as usual for the simple fact McCain has missed more then 60% of senate votes over
the last two years to run for president. The debate more than ever needs to be held, but I would put economic issues
first instead of forign policy as they have planned for this friday night. I also find this a too little, too late. This is leading
by following the pack. He is behind the curve on this issue and is trying to play to catch up.
I agree with Peter. McCain is trying to catch up on the proposed bailout issue. He is getting desparate after his lame responses resulted in losing ground in the polls. This was more political grandstanding by McCain. McCain is an erratic impulsive political animal who can be trusted to bring us four more years of Bush-like mismanagement or worse.
Yes, you attracting simpletons to your ideals has caused me much pain, I admit, but I guess I will have to deal with imbeciles being excluded from my kind.
In fact, you simpleton coward, I find no joy in more than the idea that imbeciles will be seduced by your absurd, childish, comforting absurdities, because this means that i can then talk to some minds that are worth more than just humoring and pretending that they are more than human excrement and failed genetic material.
Just be glad I have been prevented from dealing with your kind of human filth by those that still want, for personal reasons, to allow human shit to post in open forums and to be given the semblance of respect and the, undeserved, benefit of the doubt.
In short, imbecile, as long as you are protected from the likes of me then you have half a chance of protecting your stupidity from realizing its depth.
Be grateful, to your pathetic narcissistic Jewish God, for that!!!
How nice it must feel to attract thew simplistic and weak and so comfort yourself within plurality.
Do you think a sheep feels good about belonging t0 a flock?
Only an imbecile and a hypocrite like Mad Man P can find anything about you as being challenging and profound.
You are as simplistic as any animal, and just as interesting.
Be happy in attracting quantity rather than quality.
Why? I’m saying that she’s popular and well loved and she’s a good mother, from all appearances, a a nice fuckable female and so accomplished and wealthy and famous and she believes god made the world in 7 days so she should be voted for by your kind.
She definitely has the credentials and the charisma and she looks nice so she looks like she will make the perfect vice-president.
I feel her value and I sense her worth.
Why think, just vote maaaaaan.
Matt Welch | September 24, 2008, 6:18pm
Today was hardly the first time John McCain has put Country First by showily “suspending” his campaign for the White House. On March 31, 1999, a week before his scheduled “official announcement” confirming the months-old news that he was running for president, and a week after Bill Clinton sent bombers over Kosovo, McCain announced that “It’s not appropriate at this time to launch a political campaign.”
How’d that work for him politically? According to sympathetic biographer Robert Timberg,
His decision amounted to a masterful political stroke. The Washington Post’s Mary McGrory said that “professional politicians of both parties were wowed by McCain’s beau geste… McCain has made himself the de facto Republican foreign policy spokesman, and is getting yards of publicity for a non-event.” The kudos kept pouring in, as did even more demands for him to appear on news-oriented TV talk shows. On one day alone, Monday, April 5, he could be seen arguing his case on Fox News’s Crier Report, CNN’s Larry King Live, PBS’s Charlie Rose, two programs on CNBC, and two more on MSNBC, according to the Post’s Dan Balz. Balz quoted one Republican strategist as labeling the conflict in Kosovo “All McCain, all the time.” By week’s end, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, on CNN’s Capital Gang, said, “Let me just say in thirty-five years in Washington, I have never seen a debate dominated by an individual in the minority party as I’ve seen this one dominated by John McCain.”
As Jake Tapper reported, in a May 1999 Salon piece that began with the phrase “First, a confession: Sen. John McCain almost seduced me”:
“It tells people, here’s a guy who doesn’t need consultants to tell him what he believes in,” says Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., another McCain 2000 co-chairman. “Contrast that with who’s been leading this country for the last seven years.”
“He’s surged in New Hampshire,” brags [Warren] Rudman. “He went from 3 percent to 15 percent in just a month.”
As [Sen. Gordon] Smith puts it, “He’s won the Kosovo primary.”
I guess I’m missing why this would be a bad thing. Surely what he did in 1999, and what he’s doing now, are moves he’s confident the American people would respect him for, and that the polls would reflect that. Does that necessarily make him insincere? It seems to me that if a political race has to be a series of stunts (and it does), that this is the sort of stunt we could use more of.
you are over-thinking this dude. Do what you do when judging the validity of the bible…feel the truth, go with your gut, polish your credentials and comfort yourself with your accomplishments.
You are good enough, and nice enough and dog-gonnit people like you.
If it feeels right, it must be right, no matter what logic tells you.
She gave birth to a retarded child based no unselfish criteria, she sees Russia from her Alaska home, she has a family, she believes God created the universe in 7 days, she believes in the sanctity of life just as long as it does not threaten hers, in that case she says kill it, she hunts for wild animals doing the Lord’s good work, she is female, meaning she is no different than any man, she wears glasses, meaning she sees further than the average Joe over fifty, she ran an Alaskan town…there are her accomplishments.
She sounds like the perfect vice-president to run your country.
Right. Everytime there’s a problem let’s suspend the democratic process, i.e. in this case the presidential debate. Bush was able to campaign in 2004 while he was still President. Yet John McCain can’t campaign and do his job as a senator. If the situation is really so demanding, instead of suspending the campaign why not turn it over to #2 Sarah Palin?
Hey, I'm not trying to get all excited here. We seem to be used to candidates suspending their Senate or other duties to go campaigning, I don't see why it can't happen the other way around once in a while- I mean, if I had to prioritize aspects of 'the democratic process', I'd rate Senate crisis management higher than presidential debates. Besides, they can just have it in a couple days if need be- this has already been the longest campaign like, ever- how does the prospective date of this debate compare to the dates of the first round of debates in past elections?
Again, I'm sure a part of why he's doing this is a political move. Not disagreeing with you there. However, I'm making the point that every single thing both candidates do between now and election day is going to be seen as a political move, regardless of what it is, so you can't criticize it because of that.
Also, you're sort of contradicting yourself. You seem to be wanting to say that this is 'merely a stunt' when you site the 1999 thing, but then other times you want to take it seriously as a sign that McCain [i]really can't[/i] do both. So which is it?
Simply put- grant that everything Obama and McCain do between now and election day is a calculated political move. [i]Aside from that[/i], what is wrong with taking a few days off from campaigning to do his job?
The “contradiction” was meant ironically. McCain’s claim that he cannot do both is false. It’s political grandstanding because his numbers were falling in the polls after he stated that the fundamentals of the economy are sound. The first thing he did after he “suspended his campaign” was to appear on a CBS interview with Katie Couric, to campaign. If he has time for that he has time to defend his positions against the other candidate before the electorate.
Yes, it was a political move, and whatever Obama says/does in response will be another political move. Like I said, that’s all granted. I’m still waiting to hear what makes this political move, in a sea of others, worth complaining about. SO far it just sounds to me like you resent that he might be doing something to turn his poll numbers around. I can’t blame you for feeling that way, but…I can’t really blame him either.
I thought Obama made the correct response. A president is always going to be faced with problems. BIG problems. There is a difference between steady measured leadership and crisis management. It is about the attitude toward, and not so much the content of any particular “crisis”. Perhaps this impulsive gesture is a good one. Stop the world! Get in there and fix things! But what happens when the impulsive decision is a bad one? Barney Frank had it right. McCain’s or Obama’s involvement in the process isn’t a help, it is a hinderance. Neither one can add much weight to the issue, and it isn’t like either one wasn’t being kept up to date on what was happening.
We’ve had enough cowboy impulsiveness to last a good long time… We need measured judgement, not impulsive running around pissing on fires. What McCain pulled is a stunt. Had Obama pulled the same trick, it still would have been a stunt. Grandstanding is seen for what it is and it doesn’t make any difference who is doing it. BUT it says a whole bunch about temperament and management style. George Will wasn’t wrong to question McCains “temperament”.
Let the debate happen. If McCain can’t follow congressional deliberations and do the debate at the same time, he’s a damn poor choice to fill a position requiring heavy duty multi-tasking.
Well said. I totally agree. McCain claimed he needed to ride back into Washington on Thursday to lead in brokering a solution to the financial crisis. Instead he participated in a partisan showdown in which he lacked a strategy for how to bring it to an end. People in the White House meeting that he called for said McCain “sat silently for more than 40 minutes, more observer than leader, and then offered only a vague sense of where he stood.”
McCain’s actions put the first presidential debate in doubt. He said that he would not attend the debate unless a deal was worked out. Will he stick to his ultimatum or waffle? The former fighter pilot’s move was politically risky. So far it doesn’t appear to have helped him in the polls. Meanwhile, although McCain claimed to suspend his political campaign, his political ads continue to run.
I was hoping somebody would mention this. On CNN they were saying that Barack Obama, when asked for the democratic party’s position, laid it out for them in detail without the use of notes or other prepared materials. He then called on John McCain, who deferred his position to another member of the Republican party, because he said they were a more “senior member.” It was Obama who again, forty minutes later, called on McCain to state his position.
Whether this is both sides of the story I’m unsure, but it seems to me that Barack is on top of things, which is what I’d expect from somebody who graduated towards the top of their class (at Columbia or Harvard(?)). And from what I understand, McCain graduated at the bottom of his class, 352 out of 355 or something ridiculous like that.
There is no doubt in my mind McCain puts country before all else, but that doesn’t guarantee that he is smart enough to make the right decisions.
Barney Frank had it right. McCain’s or Obama’s involvement in the process isn’t a help, it is a hinderance. Neither one can add much weight to the issue, and it isn’t like either one wasn’t being kept up to date on what was happening.