The New York Times is reporting:McCain Seeks to Delay First Debate
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Senator John McCain on Wednesday injected yet another surprise into his presidential campaign, announcing that he would suspend campaigning on Thursday and seek a delay in this week’s planned debate, so that he could return to Washington to try to forge a consensus on a financial bailout package.
You can read it all here ... and I guess the IDEA is that he would come across as a problem-solver ... which would be more arguable if his poll numbers weren't heading south because every time he opens his mouth and says something else about the economy (it's "fundamentally sound" comes to mind!)
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It seems to me he comes across as a problem solver all right ... and the problem he's trying to solve is what on EARTH is he going to say on Friday night that won't keep voters from bailing on McCain/Palin by the droves.
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Stay tuned. It just gets curiouser and curiouser!
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[And here's the Washington Post "behind the scenes" look at the McCain strategy ... which includes this quote from Obama:
"There are times for politics and then there are times to rise above politics and do what's right for our country," said Obama. "This is one of those times." He added, however, that he had no plans to re-schedule Friday night's presidential debate in Oxford, Miss., as McCain had proposed in announcing the suspension of his campaign.
"It's my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess," said Obama. "Part of the president's job is to deal with more than one thing at once."
4 comments:
Dear Rev. Russell:
With all the talk of financial disaster in the news, I just have to get this off my chest.
Starting about six years ago, my wife and I used to listen to David Hall on WJR-AM radio here in Detroit on our way to church.
Mr. Hall operated and ran a company called Rock Financial and his radio show was simply one big, long advertisement for his company.
People would call in with questions about mortgages and David Hall would provide some amazing advice.
Mr. Hall would encourage people who made $40,000 to $50,000 a year to call him so he could show them how he could put them in a $400,000 luxury home (for my California friends that's a really nice house here in Michigan), with no down payment and an interest only payment of $600-$700 a month.
You'll have to take my word on this, but six years ago my wife and I used to shake our heads and wonder how this could work. On one Sunday, I even offered my uneducated opinion that this whole thing "would end badly for a lot of people."
The fact that people were buying houses they couldn't afford, for mortgages they temporarily could, seemed like a recipe for disaster. But what did I know, I'm just a guy who can barely balance a checkbook.
So my question is this. If a dummy like me can see this coming six years before it happened, how come all these political and financial geniuses who make a living at this apparently didn't see this coming until Monday and now they have to fix it by Friday.
And how are they going to fix it? They're going to make me and you pay for it. Even though I bought and paid for a house I could afford, didn't refinance my house to make a quick buck and already pay outrageous taxes, I have to help bail out companies and people who conspired to get a deal that was too good to be true. People without a dollar in the bank were allowed to buy nice homes for little money. Yeah, that's a good idea.
It makes me very mad. And I blame Republicans and I blame Democrats. They both have dirty hands in this and that's why they are eager to fashion a quick, bipartisan solution so we don't ask too many questions about how we got here. Obama and McCain are leaning on advisers who are waist deep in this sewage.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought and paid for a lot of legislators, on both sides, and now they're scrambling to cover their tracks. If one of those crooked executives get an extra buck out of this, count me out of the deal.
Ralph Nader is looking better by the moment.
A sinner saved by God's Grace
Jim of Michigan
Jim's right. I too bought no more house than I could afford. I live in a neighborhood that's become infested with large homes. My wife kept asking "How can these people afford these homes?" Well, now we have our answer. They couldn't.
I have little sympathy for people who bet that their income would go up or that interest rates would go down and then lost. It was their bet, they should have to pay it off when they lose.
Sen. McCain is taking the risk that people will agree that at this point the place for both he and Sen. Obama is in Washington D.C. attempting to solve this problem. We'll see. There's still plenty of time for debates.
No, ron ... the place for Obama and McCain are AWAY from Washington ... letting the members of the House and Senate committees working to hammer out an agreement do that work without infusing paritisan presidential politics into the mix.
And the reports I'm seeing now indicate that McCain's presence on the hill has set the process BACK ... not exactly the hoped-for-outcome.
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