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September 24, 2008

Sorry, Mr. Ahmadinajad but could you postpone wiping Israel off the map? Wall Street is having a bad week

Seriously, John McCain can't walk and chew gum at the same time? Oh I get that this is a ploy to look presidential and above the fray, as well as a head fake to throw Obama off his game. But doesn't it also play just a little bit inept?

My hunch is that McCain's real goal isn't a postponement but a compromise to change the topic of the first debate from foreign policy to the economy. Having the foreign policy debate first was one of the concessions the Obama camp won in the negotiations (while the McCain camp fought to keep Sarah Palin relatively protected from vigorous questioning). The Obama spin was that he was eager to show that he's strong on foreign affairs, but clearly his goal was to have the economy debate as the last one on people's minds before they went to the polls. If McCain can get the order switched he gets the economy out of the way in a week that he's already lost anyway and can hope that things are settled enough three weeks from now for people to start thinking about terrorism again.

But Obama's response seems like a no brainer: "I'm happy to sit down immediately with John McCain and other Senate leaders to work on this bill. We can go through Friday afternoon and pick up again Saturday morning if necessary. But national security is too important to be set aside for a more convienient moment. There are important differences between us that the American people deserve to hear. I trust that with Senator McCain's 60 years of experience in Washington he is more than capable of focusing on both of these vital tasks, as am I."

Posted by Daniel Radosh

Comments

I just told my boss that I will be unable to come in to work for the rest of the week while I focus on the financial crisis.

And Yglesias defeats Radosh by 54 minutes in today's cliche of the day competition.

Again, in a logical world, this cynical, contemptuous, and utterly nonsensical move would mean McCain doesn't have a snowball's chance of coming close to winning the presidency. I'm so sick of having to add that qualifier.

Mccain and Obama are Senators, and their job is not campaigning for President. I also don't think Wall Street is just having a bad week, I think it is about to collaspe. Mccain and Obama need to get back to Capital Hill and do their jobs, we pay them $165,000 a year to do so!

Looks to me like the McCain campaign's main effort to get around campaign financing laws/shortcomings is to constantly make crazy (and successful) bids for free publicity. Sure, it makes him look silly (to the logical world, as Vance is right to point out) but boy does it keep getting him headlines. Some people with emotional problems can't distinguish between good and bad attention. Some voters maybe, too.

With their poll numbers in freefall, the McCain campaign poured their desperation and recklessness into a shiny new bottle. They slapped a label on it that said "Leadership." But as Letterman made clear last night, it sure smells funny.

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