On Wednesday, Senator John McCain, the Republican Presidential candidate came out to a nationally televised press conference and said basically two important things. The report from Secretary of the Treasury Paulson on the $700 Billion financial markets bailout being proposed to Congress, was so long in length as to take up a mere three pages had been delivered to him on Monday. (actually he noted this during an interview on Monday, but on Wednesday elaborated further) In his conference he announced that the financial crisis was so catastrophic that he needed to “suspend his campaign” so that he might return to Washington to work on the bailout agreement. At which point he was asked what he thought about the plan and admitted he had not yet gotten around to reading that darn report. It is long you know…

So, McCain says he’s putting his campaign on hold on Friday, the first debate is scheduled for Friday and his campaign staff is playing it coy over whether or not they will show for the debate, because the Senator is “so focused on dealing with this important crisis.”

Senator Obama responded immediately by pointing out that the President will have to face numerous crises, oft times several at a time. He stated, “how can you expect to be the next President of the United States if you can’t do more than one thing at a time.”

But McCain didn’t really suspend anything. A news organization called 30 McCain field offices in battleground states Thursday, none were closed and several reported being unaware that the candidate had called for suspension of the campaign. On Wednesday McCain had been scheduled to be on The Late Show with David Letterman, but cancelled stating that he was returning to Washington immediately. Instead of doing that, he went to another building owned by the same TV station and did an interview with Katie Couric! He then stayed in NYC so long that when he finally did arrive in Washington, as if to proclaim from the rooftops that a suspension was grossly unnecessary, the Congress reached a tentative agreement on the plan before Senator McCain’s arrival.

That fell through shortly after a meeting at the White House though. And, despite stating repeatedly that he would not attend the debate until significant progress toward resolving this bill had been made, McCain left Washington on Friday morning to match words with Obama with no deal in sight.