More Mavericky Hijinks

According to Talking Points Memo, McCain’s “suspension” of his campaign was even more of a shame than I had first assumed. The McCain camp has instructed TV stations to begin reairing their ads on Saturday. And, since it takes a little while to take those kinds of things out of rotation – as in, they were still running as of last night – it looks like about the only McCain has suspended is his appearance on David Letterman and his ads for one (1) day. Not exactly the cessation of partisan politics it was represented as, is it?

The whole thing leaves us, where, exactly? McCain pulls a political stunt, never really comes through on it, goes down to Washington in time to rally the conservative backbenchers and scuttle a bipartisan agreement on the credit market crisis. Now he’s left trying to decide whether or not he goes to the debate or stands by his “this is too important to ignore” stance and allows Obama an hour and a half of primetime television to hold a question and answer session with Jim Lehrer or with an audience.

I have no doubt that McCain will show up in Mississippi tonight. He’ll mouth some platitudes about Obama once again putting his campaign before the country, just like when he didn’t agree to the townhalls that McCain wanted. There really isn’t any other option. If he doesn’t show up, he might as well pack up the tent, because this dog and pony show is over. It would be the height of absurdity for McCain, who has been avoiding the media like the plague and his running mate, who has yet to answer serious questions from a press gaggle (and after her interview with Couric, I don’t know how they can allow her to – it would be a disaster of epic proportions).

It’s been noted before that McCain’s campaign seems to be running to win the news cycle while ignoring the larger picture. McCain is all about tactics and Obama has been about strategy. We’ve seen in the last forty-eight hours the logical endpoint of this mentality. McCain does something that looks very mavericky in the first thirty seconds that you think about it. Any longer than that, though, and it just looks dangerously unhinged. McCain really is too irresponsible to be president. I can’t help but think that if Obama behaved like this, he would have been laughed off the stage by now.