The many faces of John McCainDuring the course of the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain has reversed course on more issues than one can count. Today, however, McCain outdid even himself when he called for a suspension of his campaign to deal with the present economic crisis. Actually, I would assert that McCain's announcement to return to the Senate is really more irony than inconsistency.
Irony #1: Just last week, McCain, amid a catastrophic meltdown in the financial sector, claimed that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." Today, McCain referred to the same economic environment as an "historic crisis." While leaders like McCain and President Bush have ignored the economic warning signs for months, McCain now seeks to claim that he's the one out in front of this issue. That's quite a bold attempt, considering McCain and his GOP buddies were complicit in stripping our financial system of the very safeguards that are meant to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the first place.
Irony #2: The idea that McCain wants to suspend political activities to get work done in the Senate is, in a word, laughable. McCain has not cast a single vote in the Senate since April 10th. By comparison, Barack Obama has voted 99 times since Senator McCain's last vote. McCain has missed a whopping 64% of Senate votes since the 110th Congress was sworn in January of 2007, by far the most of anyone in the Senate. In fact, the only other members of the Senate missing more than 15% of votes either ran for president (Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Sam Brownback) or had severe health issues (Tim Johnson, brain hemorrhage, and Ted Kennedy, brain cancer). McCain hasn't felt the need to show up for work for five and a half months, yet now is calling on a suspension of the 2008 campaign to fix a failing economy his party was responsible for creating. I guess that might be funny is it weren't so reprehensible.
Irony #3: Last week, Senator McCain dismissed Obama's concerns over the crashing economy as "political opportunism." If that was indeed the case, McCain has taken that opportunism to a whole new level. By "beat[ing] Obama to the punch" as the Associated Press put it, McCain has in essence forced Obama to either suspend his campaign and risk looking like a Johnny-come-lately, or go ahead with the campaign and be seen as insensitive to the economic crisis. Jumping at an opportunity to put your opponent in a political paradox is the very epitome of "political opportunism".
I think Obama did the right thing in refusing to suspend the campaign. Of the two options, he chose the one that made him look like more of a leader than a follower. Plus he got in that little jab about being able to "deal with more than one thing at once." The ultimate irony - and the reason I believe McCain is taking this siesta - is that by going back to congress to "work on the economy," he won't have to answer as many difficult questions about the economy.
