Well, the gloves are off. Sen. Barack Obama has just announced that Sen. John McCain had agreed to a joint statement on the economy. Then, while Obama was heading to his hotel, McCain put out his end-run statement that he was suspending his campaign ‘for the good of the economy.’
In his response to the McCain speech (which is already being widely condemned as shennanigans), Obama noted that he had reached out to McCain first (meanwhile, in a very solid nod towards the bipartisanship that is arising around the idea of better regulation, giving props to other Republicans for trying to create reform, not just a bail-out.) He confirmed that McCain had been invited to do a joint statement because of agreement on some joint principals (Obama noted that it was McCain that had started sounding like him, not him sounding like McCain. Check and mate.)
So how about cancelling the debate? Not so much. “It’s part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once,” he drily commented, saying that if the congressional leadership needed him to be in D.C., that’s where he would be, but that both of them being there before a vote might inject too much presidential politics into a bipartisan debate (especially since there’s this amazing invention called the telephone which means he can talk to Hank Paulson.)
Obama then did this weird thing. He took questions from the press. Hey, you remember when all candidates did that?
This article appears in September 19 • 2008.
