No, it didn’t. He WILL show up tonight (8 p.m. CDT), for his scheduled Ole Miss debate with Obama.
Yesterday’s debacle with McCain “rushing” to DC to meet on the $700 billion Sky-Is-Going-To-Fall bailout of corrupt and incompetent financial institutions, a bailout funded by us American taxpayers (I mean, I don’t pay taxes but I know YOU do and I couldn’t BE more grateful), was designed entirely to “rescue” McCain’s falling poll numbers and his widely-assumed Loser status in a one-on-one with Obama.
It backfired almost immediately. McCain reneged at the last minute on his scheduled appearance on Dave Letterman. So Letterman not only made mincemeat of McCain during his monologue, he cut to a live feed of McCain getting makeup in another CBS studio up the street at that very moment, to appear with Katie Couric instead of Dave.
McCain had lied. He wasn’t rushing anywhere. He hadn’t “suspended” his campaign, which continued with ads and staff appearances all over the place.
Letterman thus infuriated both the McCain camp and CBS’s news division simultaneously, by exposing the lie — which is why we love Dave.
Finally, at the actual “emergency” meeting in D.C., McCain said basically nothing. Just sat by while his Republican cronies, at the last minute once again (this is becoming a Republican theme), tabled what was a preliminary agreement by suddenly introducing a “new” plan. Knowing nobody was about to sign a plan on such short notice, and thus theoretically buying McCain more time and excuses for avoiding tonight’s debate.
As Senator Chris Dodd put it, the whole meeting was a disaster that looked like “a rescue plan for John McCain.”
The AP reports, “But there were signs McCain was looking for a face-saving way to make the debate, even if a deal wasn‘t sealed.”
ANYTHING, Hog fans, to keep us distracted from McCain’s Keating 5 scandal (mother of the present financial “crisis”), his boilerplate vacuity when it comes to actual facts and plans for his Presidency, his anger-management issues, his record, his discomfort in public forums with unscripted questions, his POW cover-up, his age, his redacted medical records, that thing on his left jaw . . . and the revelatory debacles of Sarah Palin on Katie Couric (not to mention Palin’s screwy / scary extremist religious beliefs that, were they not misleadingly labeled “Christian,” would make voting for Sarah Palin like voting for a screwy / scary Scientologist).
I will be attending a debate-viewing party in Hillcrest this evening, this time with Democratic friends, thank God. Which means plenty of refreshing beverages and natural herbal samplings and the underlying sexual tension that, later, when the bulk of the guests leave, an orgy could break out.
Which NEVER happens, trust me, at Chenal Republican neighborhood social occasions.
I’ll be blogging here tonight on my laptop if you care to join me (and friends) and comment along with your take on the edification of the debates, or town hall meeting, or whatever the hell it turns out to be.
Before the orgy breaks out.