by Teh Nutroots | Latest gossip from the campaign trail: Having suspended his campaign because the economy needs him, John McCain told David Letterman that he couldn't appear as scheduled on his show because he had to rush right back to DC to save America from imploding or exploding or something. (cf. Comments from Left Field) "Cue the cape and blue spandex...."(Comments from Left Field)
Dissing Letterman! Not too savvy. Ol' Dave didn't exactly take it lying down. "This doesn't smell right. This is not the way a tested hero behaves. Somebody's putting something in his Metamucil." (Ben Smith) He was so mad he went looking for McCain...and tracked him down...interviewing during the Letterman time slot with Katie Couric. Oopsie. Then the video got loose on You Tube. Oopsie doodles!
From Ben Smith:
[I]n the middle of the taping Dave got word that McCain was, in fact just down the street being interviewed by Katie Couric. Dave even cut over to the live video of the interview, and said, "Hey Senator, can I give you a ride home?"...
"He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second-string quarterback, Sarah Palin. Where is she?"
"What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"
Big mystery, apparently, as to how it ended up on You Tube. But it did.
From Gawker: .
Did someone at Letterman leak it? Why, and why not wait until after the broadcast airs? Do show producers fear CBS suits will quash the broadcast for its heavy political overtones? Or did they think they risked a ratings disaster without their A-list guest and were hoping to either effectively tease the McCain-less show or maximize revenge against the McCain camp?
Whether they capitalize on it financially or otherwise, Late Show producers have created some fascinating television.
They did.
Snark on this, McCranky.
From Comments from Left Field, courtesy of Kyle E. Moore:
One thing I know for sure is that it’s been a while (I’m not sure if we’ve cleared a full 24 hours, but we’ll run with it) since we were treated to another outright bald-faced lie.....
But McCain gracefully drops an L-bomb in such a way that it dovetails nicely with his campaign suspension....I think McCain is going to find a lot of folks not too pleased or trusting of his campaign suspension stunt; it looks more and more like something he pulled to get away from stuff he doesn’t want to deal with.
What’s he going to do if he’s, heaven forbid, actually the president? Every time something unpleasant comes up he’s going to declare there are some orphans that need saving and disappear to do an interview with Al Roker or something?
Voters want to know! Well, Democrats do. Republicans like their candidates that way.
Yay, TRex! TRex says:
The McCain campaign is an even bigger shitpile than the mortgage industry. Train-wrecks everywhere are feeling suddenly inadequate....
And yet there are still some hapless tools out there who honestly think this is some kind of strategery on the old man’s part, a way to turn the spotlight back on himself.
David Letterman isn’t one of them.
Maybe he's exhausted, maybe he's having a health crisis, maybe he hasn't done his homework -- but whatever, it's pretty clear his people are winging this now. (Lawyers, Guns, & Money)
How pissed is David Letterman? For McCain's substitute guest, he called in Keith Olbermann!
Todd Beeton at My DD muses:
But the subtext of the entire sequence was not funny, really, it was sort of sad, actually. There it was, laid bare for the entire country to see, the sad fact that John McCain is a liar and not only that but that he lied to Dave. Hey, McCain. You don't fuck with Dave.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha via rikyrah at Jack & Jill who got it via Daily Kos, here's a McCain campaign email that apparent got loose.
Oops! Colorado McCain camp sends internal e-mail to reporters
By Ernest Luning 9/24/08 3:32 PM
The regional spokesman for John McCain in Colorado accidentally sent the campaign’s internal talking points on the candidate’s plans to suspend his campaign to its entire Colorado media list, instead of a list of key volunteers, Wednesday afternoon, PolitickerCO’s Jeremy Pelzer reports.The memo, titled “TALKING POINTS: SUSPENDING THE CAMPAIGN,” includes a list of points the campaign wants emphasized, and includes this warning from Kise: “Please do not proactively reach out to the media on this.”
Snerk!
Athenae at First Draft is almost as pissed about the suspension of the campaign as Letterman was about the fake cancellation..
They wanna cower in the corner and say, "Mommy, he's being mean!" They wanna suspend their campaign? Let them.
They're on the ropes, they know it, the country knows it, Colorado and Virginia and Wisconsin and Minnesota and Ohio and Nevada and Florida know it, and you want to prove once and for all that Democrats are tough competitors? You don't let them off the ropes. You hit them again. And again. And again. The more you hit them the slower they're gonna get.
Because knocking them down and knocking them out and kicking them out of the ring in a hail of garbage and catcalls in 41 days is the only thing right now that anybody can do to fix this mess we're in and that does not wait for one minute for poor old John McCain to catch his fucking breath. I'm done. No. America is not going to wait...America is not going to back up for you, Sen. McCain.
Not. One. Inch.
.Ron Chusid at Liberal Values notes that even McCain's supporters are mocking him for the suspension of the campaign:
This gimmick is only fooling the die hard McCain apologists. Even The National Review is mocking McCain suggesting that since Obama wants to proceed with the debate, “they’d like McCain to just offer Palin step in for him.”
Taylor Marsh via Ben Smith has a note---a society page note:
[I]f you're interested in McCain's real priorities, Ben Smith adds an interesting element:
The McCain campaign's new urgency about the financial crisis didn't entirely clear his schedule this morning. My colleague Amie Parnes reports that he made it to his scheduled morning meeting with Lady Lynn de Rothschild, a Clinton backer who recently came out in support of him. All while Obama was waiting by the phone for a returned call. Wonder if Lady Lynn shared notes with Cindy on fashion? File it under elitists unite.
Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof:
Once again this calls into question Mr. McCain's judgment. He makes a snap decision, shoots off his mouth, takes a stand, and lets the chips fall where they may. He's bragged that that is a part of his personality and that it was -- wait for it -- honed when he was P.O.W. Example: he launched a pre-emptive war of words against Russia over Georgia, which only inflamed the issue, and endeared himself to the neo-con wing of his party and scared the crap out of our European allies. Or his snap decisions. Example: Sarah Palin.
TBogg sees the whole "let's put the whole campaign on hold" plan as "John McCain's attempt to shut down and reboot a dying campaign" and quotes "Mickey Edwards, Princeton lecturer and former Republican congressman." Among much else, Edwards said:
Oh, brother. What idiot came up with this stunt?
It ranks somewhere on the stupidity scale between plain silly and numbingly desperate....Sorry, john; it really sounds like you're afraid to debate. This sounds like the sort of ploy we used to use in junior high school elections.
Why not just call a state of emergency ("We were attacked by bad markets!") and just suspend the whole election?
For each voter who believes McCain's explanation for this proposal, ten more will say: Are you kidding? How gullible do you think we are?
Wasn’t he going to read up on this economics stuff awhile ago? I bet Greenspan’s book on how not to worry about the bubble was helpful…
Yeah, um, AMEN.McCain suspends his campaign because of financial crisis? Oh please. Given today's poll numbers--even Fox has him dropping--it seems another Hail Mary (like the feckless selection of Palin) to try make McCain seem a statesman, which is difficult given the puerile tenor of his campaign's message operation.
John Cole at Balloon Juice:
If you want some moron to run around like his hair is on fire in a time of crisis, McCain is your man.
More stuff about the Letterman flap at MEMEORANDUM.
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Posted by: Lies Lipstick Smoke Screens | September 25, 2008 at 04:39 PM