Motley Moose – Archive

New York Times:

Senator John McCain said Wednesday that he would temporarily suspend his presidential campaign on Thursday to return to Washington to deal with the financial crisis and the $700 billion bailout package now before Congress.

Mr. McCain said he told Senator Barack Obama that he was asking the Commission on Presidential Debates to postpone the debate scheduled for Friday night.

“I am calling on the president to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself,” he said. “It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem.”

‘McCain Suspends Campaign’ is a headline you don’t expect to see every day.  Looks like Obama has to tread lightly here; he can’t let his opponent gain the upper hand on statesmanship.  On the up side, the foreign policy debate is one that Obama can afford to hold off on for the time being.

With the intellectual equivalent of  surrendering before the battle has actually started, the McCain campaign today stated that they would appreciate it if their VP candidate could do her first debate without any actual, you know, “debating” involved.

Patrick Healy at the New York times has this:

At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.

McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive.

No kidding.