McCain Suspends Campaign

Good lord, McCain, it would appear, is suspending his campaign, and canceling the Friday debate:

It has become clear that no consensus has developed to support the Administration’s proposal.  I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands, and we are running out of time.

Tomorrow morning, I will suspend my campaign and return to Washington after speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative.  I have spoken to Senator Obama and informed him of my decision and have asked him to join me.

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

We must meet as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans, and we must meet until this crisis is resolved.  I am directing my campaign to work with the Obama campaign and the commission on presidential debates to delay Friday night’s debate until we have taken action to address this crisis.

I think this is either utterly absurd, or a sign that the McCain camp is doing badly.  I’d like to see this as an actual call for bi-partisanship, but I just don’t think so.

Writes Michael Crowley:

A few insta-reactions:

–Having thrown a Hail Mary with the Sarah Palin pick and feeling he scored a touchdown (although that’s certainly debatable), he may have concluded that risk-taking works for him. He’s always known the fundamentals of the race were against him and would require some out-of-the-box thinking.

–He was losing control of the campaign narrative. The Palin surge/convention bounce is nearly kaput. Obama seems to be tied or ahead in Virginia and Florida is back in play. Today’s WashPost poll showed McCain nine points down and distrusted on the economy. The media’s interest this week is in Rick Davis’s lobbying and Sarah Palin’s comical photo-ops. Things could hardly get much worse.

–Steve Schmidt’s philosophy seems to be that it’s always better to be on the offensive, and this certainly counts as that. As Ben Smith puts it, Obama’s choice–come to DC on McCain’s terms or dismiss this as a stunt?–”is not an easy or obvious one.”

Andrew Sullivan asks if the campaign is collapsing.

MSNBC reports that:

According to the source, McCain wants to create a “political free zone” until a deal is reached on legislation for a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry.

What to think, what to think.  It feels gimmicky, though I understand the real concern here of financial collapse…And now what will Obama do?  This puts him in a tricky position.  I was looking forward to the debate, I must admit, and while I know that we have to fix this financial crisis, not debating it seems like a mistake, or a dodge from McCain.