Both presidential candidates took the highly unusual steps of suspending their campaigns during the final push to the election nov. 4.
First there was John McCain. Several days after the bottom fell out of the ecoomy John McCain announced that he would suspend his campaign and return to Washington to work for a solution. We all know what followed---from his fellow politicians, from the media, even from David Letterman. His dramatic gesture was criticized for being--a dramatic gesture, and Mccain slunk back to the campaign trail where he was roundly criticized for pulling such a transparent publicity stunt.
Literally days before the election, barrack obama announces that he will suspend his campaign long enough to fly to Hawaii to visit the bedside of his grandmother, who raised him. He is willing to risk the election but unwilling to live with the possibility that he will miss seeing her for the last time. He gets on a plane and goes to Hawaii, where he actually does what he said he would do--visit his grandmother. The press resepcts his privacy and my suspicios is that we won't hear obama asking for the sympathy vote or a pat on the ack for being a dutiful grandon.
And there you have the election I a nutshell: Two men, two choices, two suspended campaigns.
In my opinion, these two incidents offer the most revealing example of who these two men are--who are asking us to evaluate their character and make a choice. Maybe after Maybe after all three debates, nearly two years of campaigns, and millions of speeches, actions relly do seak louder than words.
