Like a junior high student who fakes a cough to get out of the exam because he knows he isn’t ready, the New York Times is reporting that John McCain has spent little to no time preparing for the debate.
The debate on Friday was to focus on Mr. McCain’s perceived strength, foreign policy. Mr. McCain had not planned to devote large blocks of time to debate practice as did Mr. Obama, who was holing up with a tight circle of advisers at a hotel in Clearwater, Fla., on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to prepare. Mr. McCain had a preparatory session on Wednesday afternoon at the Morgan Library in Manhattan, but advisers said it had been interrupted by his decision, announced immediately afterward, to suspend his campaign.
Democrats were withering in their reaction to Mr. McCain’s decision.
“Now that we are on the verge of making a deal, John McCain airdrops himself in to help us make a deal,” said Representative Barney Frank, of Massachusetts and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. “Frankly, we are going to have to interrupt a negotiating session tomorrow between Democrats and Republicans on a bill where I think we are getting pretty close to troop down to the White House for a photo op.”
“What, does McCain think the Senate will still be working at 9 p.m. Friday?” Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania said in an interview, referring to the scheduled start time of the debate. “I think this is all political.”
The move to “suspend” his campaign is about four things, in my opinion:
1) McCain is clearly not prepared to debate Obama this Friday. He is not ready to debate on the economy, given his previous statements that he is not that well versed on the issue (as evidenced by his many gaffes on the subject). Frankly, I don’t believe he really wants to talk about foreign policy and explain why we should be spending 10 Billion a month in Iraq while Iraq sits on a huge surplus.
2) His tanking poll numbers have clearly freaked him out. Notwithstanding the NBC poll, just about every national/state poll has Obama surging since the economic crisis hit. McCain has at no point shown any ability to get ahead on the issue. This is like a basketball team calling a 20 second time out after the opposing squad going on a 10-1 run. This stunt gets the focus off his many issues (Palin’s disastrous CBS interview, Rick Davis, etc) and back to a discussion of political tactics.
3) This is speculation, but one wonders if McCain is having something of a money crunch. He only has 84 Million to spend, and while the RNC has plenty of money, they cannot directly coordinate with the McCain camp. “Suspending” their campaign allows them to save money while still getting publicity for this stunt.
4) Getting Sarah Palin away from the media and debates. The McCain camp is floating a plan to move the debate to next Thursday and moving the VP debate to some later date. Given her awful CBS interview, this is hardly shocking.
Now, I suppose this gambit could work; Ben Smith at Politico posits the best case scenario which I don’t think is likely. What’s important here is that Congressional Dems have Obama’s back and don’t do anything to undermine him and give McCain the ability to claim credit for a deal.
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