Well, tons more coverage today of McCain’s campaign “suspension” (when you’re producing strong shocks all the time, I guess you’ve got suspension, ahem) and debate dodge. Is he flailing, is he incompetent? Does he think people won’t recognize how he’s injecting politics into the bailout negotiations even as he claims he’s trying to remove politics from the campaign, and even though folks back in DC, from both sides the aisle, would just as soon not have him around?
David Letterman was expecting to have him around on his show, until McCain called up to say he had to hurry back to rescue Washington … though he did make a side trip — right when he was supposd to be on Letterman — to get interviewed by Couric. Letterman was less than amused. I mean, first you alienate the press, John, and then the late night talk shows — there’s being a maverick and there’s being an idiot, they really are two different things …
(Oh, and John, you might want to talk to John Edwards, who caught such flak for his $400 haircut; spending $5000 on a makeup session might seem like good idea, but it does draw attention.)
On the other hand, it’s not like it’s actually affecting his campaign, since his campaign folks continue to slam Obama and run TV ads.
Palin may also suspend her campaign by a wild coincidence. Not that she has to run off to DC like John to save the nation, but anything that keeps her away from the public and the press can only be seen as a positive for the Palin/McCain ticket — which is why, perhaps, McCain’s so eager to shift the date of the first presidential election from this Friday to 2 October — displacing the VP debate, to be rescheduled at some later time. Slick!
To be sure, I’m sure if Palin just got a little bit more experience and education, she’d be treated the same as the big boys and not kept wrapped (and gagged) in cotton. In the meantime, she’ll just have to depend on God’s direct intervention in the election process to keep her going. That and rigging the Troopergate investigation so that not only does she oversee the personnel board running her investigation, but she can cancel it at any time, and keep its deliberations and conclusions secret. Nice work, if you can get it.
Not so nice for the McCain campaign staffers up in Alaska, as a legislator up there has suggested they could be charged with witness tampering by inducing folks to not show up for subpoenaed appearances. One can but hope.
In the realm of other dirty tricks, take another look at that gushing letter to the editor from some mom whose kid is in Iraq but who loves McCain and Palin — it might actually have been written by a Dutch journalist under cover and working in the McCain campaign, then sent to campaign offices around the nation to find someone local to sign it and send it in.
And let us not forget Rush Limbaugh who’s still repeating his newest “Obama is ‘Arab-African’” drivel. To be followed soon by the shocking revelation that Joe Biden actually an illegal Mexican immigrant, and Hillary Clinton is having Sarah Palin’s love child and there are SPIDERS crawling ALL OVER MEEEEEE!!!