On Wednesday – after a week in which he apparently felt he didn’t need to be in Washington, D.C., to work on the proposed financial sector bailout bill – Sen. John McCain abruptly called for Friday’s presidential debate on foreign policy to be canceled so that he and Sen. Barack Obama could help solve the crisis. But the campaign notion that this was a self-sacrificing act was dismissed by many analysts even before McCain’s timeline was questioned. Obama announced that earlier in the day he had called McCain to suggest a joint statement on the economy. McCain agreed, but then, while the campaigns’ staffs were still working on the language, McCain released his own end-run statement that he was suspending his campaign and wanted to cancel the debate. How did Obama regard the cancellation? “Part of the president’s job is to deal with more than one thing at once,” he commented drily, saying that if the congressional leadership needed him to be in D.C., that’s where he would be. At press time, there was no sign that Austin Democrats were planning to cancel their debate-watching parties. Considering that the proposed $700 billion bailout may somehow relate to the federal government’s ever-expanding international debt, it may be the ideal time for a foreign policy discussion. alt.metal
This article appears in September 26 • 2008.
