Dear Sen. McCain: “Say What??!!!!”

Excuse me for the rude interruption into your regularly scheduled afternoon Internet programming, but did I just hear this right?

John McCain is going to suspend his campaign and wants to postpone Friday night’s debate?

Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

One week after saying the fundamentals of the economy were just peachy, McCain suddenly wants to “suspend” the process by which we (for better or worse) select the leader of the free world. Just a little too cute for my taste …

What happened? Did someone on the campaign plane stumble upon a scary CRS or GAO report of some kind and make the mistake of slipping it into the candidate’s briefcase in between campaign hops?

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has already asked Congress to give him (as staggering as it is) $700,000,000,000 so he can flush out all those toxic “illiquid assets” clogging the economic system. Congress is quite aware of the request. They are considering it. For better or worse, as crazy as the numbers are, and as whacky as members of Congress can sometimes be — they are on the job.

Moving too fast for some. Too slow for others. But life goes on.

Despite our little financial “challenge” right now, this is still the greatest country on the face of the earth — with the hallmark of that greatness being that we freely choose the man or woman who will lead us every four years. We’ve been doing this for a few years now. I suggest we keep doing it for a few more.

Look. Modern-day “debates” are not really debates anyway. They are simultaneously staged news conferences with each candidate happening to stand next to the other. I get that. But they ARE part of the process leading up to November’s election. We need to see Sens. Obama and McCain side by side, so we can size them up. Now.

If President Bush wants to convene congressional leaders and include Sen. McCain or Sen. Obama for the sake of future continuity re: the rescue plan, fine by me.

But suspending the campaign and postponing the debate is the looniest idea of the day. That is, until Obama decides to go along.

We can walk and chew gum at the same time, people. If McCain is not ready for the debate, I gotta hand it to him — this is one really interesting and dramatic “dog-ate-my-homework” excuse to lay on the teacher just two days before the assignment is due.

Get a grip, senator. If you want to come back for a vote on this or that rescue plan, fine. But if this is nothing more than a cheap, one-day PR stunt to inject some needed economic steroids into your campaign, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Get back to work, senator. Still 48 hours of debate prep time available. Stop wasting it on stunts like this.

While you’re at it, you might also want to order up a Chris Cox-like firing of the staffer who came up with the idea in the first place.