McCain Looks To Duck Debate For Good Of Country
Breaking political news this hour from The Huffington Post has Senator John McCain asking for a postponement of the Friday debate in Mississippi. This strikes me as good strategy, but a glaring sign of weakness. Just last week the Senator was saying that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. On Monday I was reading that McCain was already started to downplay his expectations for the Friday debate by pumping up Senator Obama’s debating skills. This is great politics because it puts Obama in the position of looking insensitive on the economy, and makes McCain look like the post partisan across the aisle dude that he’s been trying to move back to. Yet I cannot see McCain asking for a postponement if he were 5 to 10 points up on Obama. Both of these Senators need to be back in Washington working on a solution, but postponing the debate is nothing but a weak dodge.
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I’m genuinely curious about this tactic. I’m not naive enough to believe in McCain’s altruism. But, I thought he felt a debate would play to his “townhall meeting’ strengths. Has that changed? Is it the polls that are informing this decision? Most obviously, he turns Obama into a follower by being the first to postpone, but there are 433 other congresspeople, 98 other senators and only two or three presidential debates before Nov. 4. So, a postponement is a major, major issue. Is it as obvious as McCain simply wanting to point the finger at Obama’s bailout vote?