John McCain's call to suspend the presidential campaigns and debates is downright deceitful and frankly desperate.
Why? Yesterday McCain "approved this message" in a video press release billed as an ad titled "Mum." It attacks Barack Obama for doing nothing on the economic crisis.
"In crisis experience matters," the announcer says. "McCain and his congressional allies led.... Obama and his liberal allies? Mum on the market crisis because no one knows what to do. More taxes. No leadership. A risk your family can't afford."
But their attempt to weave this and other attacks into the crisis's narrative has failed, evidenced by the polls that are rolling out showing his post-convention lead falling off across the country. His campaign is obviously worried about it: this morning, they held a conference call trying to explain away the slipping.
His attacks are not sticking. His campaign is desperate. So what is their plan? Try to cast McCain as the Washington power-broker problem-solver by suspending his campaign and postponing all debates. Hey, maybe he can even get back to some of that bipartisanship he was so fond of before 2007?
Instead of calling Obama "mum" on the crisis as he did literally hours ago (an attack still displayed on his "suspended" campaign's YouTube page), today he says, "Senator Obama has expressed his priorities and concerns." Of course, that admission comes right after he touts that he had his "proposal" out since "last Friday." For the record, Obama has been speaking out all along, even publicly meeting with his top economic advisors last week -- a move McCain copied today as his campaign went into flat-out panic mode.
Hopefully the media will see this for what it is: a bold-face campaign tactic. A desperately deceitful move to try and regain their footing.
We deserve better. There is no reason that Barack Obama should pull himself off the stump and away from the debates in order for John McCain to seek shelter from a crisis that his Republican Party's calls for rampant deregulation helped create.