Now that the impending doom of this economic meltdown has sobered us up and our public discourse has shifted from phony outrage to the real stuff, John McCain needs to regroup. Citing the need for an emergency meeting of congressional leaders (already in progress) to address the financial crisis as his rationale, McCain is suspending his campaign and asking to postpone Friday’s Presidential debate. Though I’m all for both candidates taking five minutes out from glad-handing it to do there damn jobs, my ever-metastasizing cynicism keeps my spidey senses tingling. If your campaign were about solutions and proving that you were capable of navigating America out of a storm, than you wouldn’t have to call a time out from it so you can come up with solutions and prove that you are capable of navigating America out of a storm. Don’t look for any applause here. Besides John McCain’s frenzied slew of responses thus far have been far from reassuring.  From announcing that the fundamentals of our economy are strong, to proclaiming the importance of government oversight despite thirty years of being “fundamentally a deregulator,” to calling for the decapitated head of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris Cox, back to, of course, blaming Barack Obama for our undoing, it’s laughable to think that a man marked with such mania will be the one to swoop down and chart a steady course.

The timing of this public grandstanding is also rather telling. This is the email that Obama Campaign Spokesman Bill Burton sent to reporters…

At 8:30 this morning, Senator Obama called Senator McCain to ask him if he would join in issuing a joint statement outlining their shared principles and conditions for the Treasury proposal and urging Congress and the White House to act in a bipartisan manner to pass such a proposal. At 2:30 this afternoon, Senator McCain returned Senator Obama’s call and agreed to join him in issuing such a statement. The two campaigns are currently working together on the details.”

And it was, of course, by sheer happenstance that McCain didn’t send out his declaration of bipartisan heroicism to reporters until 2:56 PM, cuz he was totally already gonna say all that. Come on, this is some grade school type shit. Stop using our national crisises to stage your cheap theater and hollow photo ops as a way to one up your political opponent. As the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank aptly pointed out, “We’re trying to rescue the economy, not the McCain campaign.” You get no timeouts!

L.Arnell