One Thing At A Time

Presidential candidate John McCain wants to save the nation’s economy and then debate Barack Obama. Obama thinks they can do both at the same time.

At first glance it was a clever gambit by John McCain. The Republican presidential candidate tried looking statesman-like and announced on prime-time television that he intended to suspend his campaign. The financial crisis, he said, was so far-reaching that party politics shouldn’t dominate the picture and that a bi-partisan solution to it had to be addressed.

Apropos of nothing, he called on his Democratic opponent to do likewise. And above all, to postpone their first planned debate scheduled for Friday.

That’s a desire that probably consumes his soul, because the hand he’s playing against the Senator 30 years his junior isn’t all that great. “McCain comes off looking clearly worse than Obama in any debate,” says political scientist and America-expert Hans J. Kleinsteuber.

The Economy Problem

One of his biggest problems: Although McCain is well versed in foreign affairs, his doesn’t have a firm grip on economics. He candidly admits that economics is his Achilles heel. And neither did he pick a running mate capable of giving much help in that area. “On the contrary,” says Kleinsteuber, “Sarah Palin isn’t a factor at all in discussing foreign policy or the economy.”

Barack Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, both trained lawyers, are of a different caliber. “Certainly, they’re both intellectually better able to present workable solutions,” says Kleinsteuber. Obama’s camp would have a lot more maneuvering room.

Democrats Ahead By a Nose

The economy, so often the deciding factor in American elections, this time appears to belong to the Democrats. In a recent Washington Post/ABC poll, Obama leads not only overall by 11 percentage points, but on the question of which candidate has better knowledge of economic matters, Obama actually has a 24 point lead. He also has a two-digit lead on the question of who would have the better economic policies for the nation.

These figures may have frightened the 72-year old Senator from Arizona, because he had been dominating the headlines ever since his nomination at the convention a month ago. The decline is due less to the man himself than to his strategy of bringing to the national stage the inexperienced and unknown Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, and selecting her as his running mate.

The winds have changed in recent days. Sarah Palin was thoroughly examined from every angle and quickly lost her media allure. Obama reclaimed media attention and made a better impression as far as the deepening financial crisis was concerned.

For Americans, that’s more important than for the people of most other nations because not only do most Americans own stocks, their pensions are dependent on what happens on the stock exchange. Retirement plans there are much more dependent on their investments than they are here. Thus, the crisis affects not only businesses, but nearly every individual citizen. John McCain then did what he has so often done in a tight situation: he demagogued it. On television. And he seemingly ran over Obama.

In the hour of emergency, party politics must take a back seat. The most important thing is salvation from a serious crisis. So said McCain. And repeated with greater effect in public what he and Obama had privately discussed in a telephone conversation.

Both had outlined in separate press conferences on Tuesday how they proposed to rescue Wall Street. Many points were identical, including relief for taxpayers, restrictions on executive pay and the need for bi-partisan cooperation. Senator Tom Coburn, a conservative Republican from Oklahoma, called Obama and suggested combining both positions into one.

Obama telephoned McCain, but he was on the road. McCain returned his call in the afternoon and the Senators discussed the idea for several minutes, as Obama reported to U.S. media sources. They both had discussed possibly suspending their campaigns and rescheduling the first debate. Obama said he wasn’t basically opposed to these ideas, but felt it was important that both candidates spoke with one voice and therefore wanted to wait until President Bush had addressed the nation. McCain agreed to that.

He agreed to it, but he didn’t do it.

Barely 20 minutes later, Obama had returned to his hotel in Florida and by then McCain’s announcement was running on every television network. Obama probably wasn’t amused.

Time to Negotiate

The McCain team commented that the Senator was convinced after discussions with representatives from his party that a joint statement wasn’t enough. On a CBS newscast McCain said, “This isn’t the time for statements. I think Americans are expecting more from us. Now is the time to act.”

That sounds like Barack Obama, but Obama apparently isn’t afraid of a direct meeting with his rival. “I think that it is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once. I think there’s no reason why we can’t be constructive in helping to solve this problem and also tell the American people what we believe and where we stand and where we want to take the country,” Obama said in a press conference that evening.

Hillary Clinton’s Democratic colleague in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, also didn’t hesitate to criticize McCain: “It’s not a matter of which policy is better, it’s who can get ahead of the other.”

Political scientist Kleinsteuber also sees McCain’s act as a stopgap. “That was a purely defensive strategy,” he commented. The crisis is a worst-case scenario for McCain who has admitted to being a beginner in the field of economics. Not only has McCain nothing to offer in that area, in both past legislatures he often voted with the President. That doesn’t make him look any more competent.

McCain’s chess gambit may have appeared brilliant at first glance. Now it looks as though it’s likely to backfire.