John McCain and the First Debate

I heard on my way home from work today that GOP presidential candidate John McCain wanted to postpone tomorrow night's debate so he could go to Washington and work on the economic bail out package. I laughed.

"Of course McCain wants to postpone the debate. It fits in so well with his strategy of distraction!"

McCain's goal has been to tell distracting enough lies so that people will talk about the lies he tells instead of the issues. Sure, the economy is an issue. But taking a time out from campaigning just gets people taking about the time out he took, not the economy.

The cynicism is incredible. Of all Senators, John McCain has been absent from the Senate the most. There have been 643 votes taken in the current Senate session: McCain has missed 412 of them. Since March, he has missed 109 of the last 110 votes. Now, on the eve of a debate, he wants to go be a senator?

I loved Senator Obama's response: the next President will have to deal with more than this one issue.

David Letterman's response (quoted in the Drudge Report) was also entertaining:

"You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves." And he joked: "I think someone's putting something in his metamucil."

"He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sara Palin. Where is she?"

"What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"

I know John McCain is a war hero. War hero's can be cynics, too. And he seems to think that discretion is the better part of valor at the moment...