Let’s Suspend the Whole Election

Although I had to temporarily suspend my blog for a while in order to fix the nation’s economy, now that John McCain is on the case, I am finally able once again to turn my attention back to blogging. It is true that McCain once said, “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should. I’ve got Greenspan’s book,” but I think we can all agree that we are better off having McCain single-handedly solving our financial crisis than this modest blogger. And he has probably finished Greenspan’s book by now, which I have not actually read. But as usual John McCain is being entirely too cautious and humble by merely suspending his campaign and postponing the debates to get our economy running again. McCain is not by nature one to be rash and impulsive, but I think it’s time for him to throw caution to the wind for a change and ask Barack Obama to agree to suspend the entire election.

I have been very concerned that with John McCain out on the campaign trail for the last year a lot of pressing problems aren’t getting solved. One of the reasons we may be in this economic mess in the first place is that McCain was too busy campaigning to prevent it from happening. Once McCain is no longer distracted by such weighty campaign issues as whether Obama insulted Sarah Palin when he referred to “lipstick on a pig” or why Obama wants to teach sex education to Kindergartners, he can finally focus on fixing the economy.

But our economy is not the only problem that needs John McCain’s laser-like focus and once he personally gets us out of this economic mess, there are other pressing problems needing his attention that will require even more campaign postponements. It will take at least a few days for McCain to discover new sources of renewable energy and end our dependence on Mideast oil. And I’m sure the Obama campaign won’t begrudge Sen. McCain the time he needs to find Osama Bin Laden and win the War on Terror, which could take another week. I don’t think it will take McCain more than a day or two to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan and start bringing our troops home, but solving the immigration problem might be a little more thorny and time consuming, what with the logistics involved in rounding up all of the illegal immigrants and deporting them. No doubt McCain will want to waste a few days thinking about global warming, which I don’t even think exists, but he thinks is a big problem. And by the time McCain gets around to curing cancer it will probably be November already.

Would it really be fair to go on with the election when Obama has been campaigning the whole time McCain has been fixing America’s problems? And I don’t think most Americans would mind letting George Bush stay in office a little longer, which will give us a little more time to steel ourselves and get ready for all the changes John McCain has in store for us when he does get elected. Electing McCain in November might not give Americans enough time to adjust to such a radical transformation from the last eight years. I think Americans would welcome a bit of a breather first.

Obama has rejected McCain’s call for suspending the campaign and postponing this Friday’s presidential debate, saying, "I think that it is going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once." Obama’s response was telling. Do we really want a President who is not going to be focused, who will not be able to put all of his attention into solving one problem at a time? I don’t think it is Obama’s fault that he has such a short attention span. He grew up watching television and came of age in an era of computer multitasking. John McCain was born before television even existed and he barely knows what a computer is. We need a President like McCain who will not be distracted by trying to take on a new crisis every day but will have the discipline to put everything else aside and concentrate on a problem before taking a short nap and going on to the next one.

Some people (such as David Letterman) have said that McCain doesn’t need to suspend his campaign, that while he is busy meditating on how to fix the economy in his Washington retreat, he could turn over the reigns to Sarah Palin. I’m sure that she would do a fine job campaigning for McCain around the country, holding town meetings with typical Americans who have not been prescreened and giving unscripted news conferences, but I think McCain is going to need Palin’s expertise on economics and foreign policy and he will want her at his side giving him advice, which is why he chose her in the first place. (Of course, this just points up another difference between McCain and Obama: McCain chose someone who can help him govern, while Obama clearly chose Biden just to help him win Delaware’s electoral votes.)

McCain wants to reschedule the first presidential debate for the day the vice-presidential debate now happens to be scheduled. Although I think this is optimistic on McCain’s part as I think he’ll still be working to solve the nation’s problems at that point, it does give some insight into McCain’s sense of fair play. The McCain campaign could have proposed moving the vice presidential debate up to Friday instead of postponing it indefinitely but that would not have been fair to Joe Biden, who probably would not have been ready to debate Palin so soon. Say what you will about John McCain, he is a man who fights fair and doesn’t go in for cheap political stunts and gimmicks.

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