John McCain 'Suspending' Campaign by Campaigning More

It really depends on what you mean by "suspend," doesn't it? John McCain's maverick move to suspend his campaign so he can grandstand on something he knows literally nothing about -- the American Economy -- isn't actually a suspension of anything. It's a stupid stunt to getmorecampaign press coverage. And nothing is suspended at all. Go to McCain's website, and you'll see he's still collecting campaign contributions and still running his trashy anti-Obama video spots. He's still doing interviews (just not Letterman!) and he'll almost certainly still do the debate on Friday. Also, he pulls this crap all the time.

The old gimmick McCain loves is to run standard dirty hyper-partisan campaigns, funded completely by lobbyists (who also literally manage his campaigns). Then, every few weeks, he does some showboat bullshit about being "above politics" or whatever, and an ever-decreasing number of political reporters briefly note this stunt, and then it's all totally forgotten again.

Try to remember an example from, say, three weeks ago. Right, the GOP convention. Hurricane Gustav looked like it might pound New Orleans and the Republicans sure didn't want to share prime time with the poor black people drowning, again, so McCain's campaign decided it was all about "country first" and just canceled the first night of the convention and most of the second night.

It was cheap and cynical and of course it intentionally kept the hated monsters Dick Cheney and George W. Bush back in Washington, and by waiting out the hurricane the campaign also managed to bridge the gap between the exciting stunt of announcing Sarah Palin as the running mate on Friday -- the morning after Obama's epic nomination speech/spectacle at the Denver football stadium -- and Palin's carefully scripted "hockey mom" bitchfest/acceptance speech about how black people and their "communities" are really just ghettos of black people.

McCain also "suspended campaigning" when he ran for president eight years ago. After telling the press (his base) that he was going to announce his run in March 1999, he melodramatically "postponed" the announcement because of the U.S. bombing of the Serbs in Kosovo (and the rest of Serbia).

On a single day during this brave non-postponement, McCain appeared on Fox News, MSNBC, Larry King, Charlie Rose and the business channels to talk about Kosovo and his suspended campaign.

But nobody's falling for that trick anymore.

 Stop Me if You Think That You've Heard This One Before [Reason Hit & Run]