What To Do, What to Do?

The Old Man still has some tricks up his sleeve.

As most of you now know, John McCain made the decision to suspend his campaign and return to Congress to work on the economic crisis. Apparently, he believes that solving this problem is more important than running for president and he wants to put his country before his ambition.

And I'm actually a white guy.

Of course that's not really why McCain suspended his campaign. John McCain doesn't know crap about the economy, he's not popular with most Republicans and his ambition is bigger than his wife's bank account. No, John McCain discovered he was down by almost double digits in national polls, realized the public doesn't have any confidence in his ability to solve economic problems and decided it was time to make a bold unpredictable move.

That's the reality of the situation.

McCain has positioned himself to put pressure on Obama to suspend his campaign just when the Obama campaign has mega momentum. If Obama refuses, he runs the risk of being a labeled a typical politician who cares more about getting elected than solving problems. It's a very creative move. Plus, McCain is using the move to postpone the upcoming economic debate where he was certain to get reamed out.

Obama has to decide what he wants to do in this situation. Early reports are that he won't suspend his campaign. Honestly, I don't feel qualified to give him advice (not that he would listen to a random internet lunatic), and I trust his instincts in these things.

The sad thing is this is clearly a political move by McCain that he is cloaking in love of his country. He doesn't want to debate because he would get his ass whipped. However, his decision plays on the mostly justified skepticism so many Americans have for politicians.

Look, we all pretend that we hate politicians because they can't work together, don't get anything done and argue too much, but that's utter bullshit.

First, most Americans care more about themselves than they do about their fellow man. Second, most Americans are so entrenched in their political opinions that they cannot objectively consider any issue.


Why do we hold our politicians to some hypocritical standard of cooperation? Do most Americans work together to accomplish goals? Not really. We rarely look past our own issues regarding, race, gender region, yet we expect our politicians to be masters at it. The main job of national politicians is to bring back pork to their home states, and while some folks love to rail against this, most of them also prefer roads without potholes and shiny new parks. The fact is, Americans expect their politicians to do what's best for the people who elected them, not the country as a whole, and that's exactly what most politicians do.

On the other point, I'll admit that I'm as guilty as everybody else when it comes to pretending that I can truly look at opposing positions objectively. Sadly, I can't.

I may do a better job than most of considering multiple angles of an issue, but I have some pretty glaring biases that come into play with every issue. Shoot, when that news broke recently about Obama and his support for the bridge to nowhere I was spinning it before the campaign was.

I raise these points because if people were honest about their expectations of politicians this move by McCain would fail miserably. People would see his posturing for the smokescreen it is. They would understand that McCain is suspending his campaign because he wants to avoid the constant questions that come on the campaign trail and also pretend to be hard at work on a solution to a problem he barely understands.

That's what should happen.

But, I doubt that's what is going to happen.