As you can read below, John McCain has announced the suspension of his campaign, ostensibly so he can “help out” during the financial crisis.

It naturally has nothing to do with his flailing campaign or Obama’s strengthening one.

Did I mention I have a bridge in New York I’d like to sell you?

I did vaguely consider (for maybe 5 seconds) the posibility of giving McCain the benefit of the doubt that he’s actually taking a principled stand. But I simply cannot bring myself to pretend that I believe it for even a second.

McCain is one of 100 senators. He’s not the head of the Treasury, he’s not the vice-president or president. He’s a senior guy in Washington, but he’s nowhere near indispensable during this crisis. Neither is Obama, and if Obama is stupid enough to fall for this ploy and follow McCain to Washington, he’d be about as useless.

McCain wants a game changer. He wants to shift the momentum. He wants to see if he can convince voters he’s really taking this seriously and then put Obama in the position of continuing his campaign (he puts politics over country) or following his lead (Obama only went when McCain forced his hand!). He certainly does not want to risk a bad debate this Friday when his campaign has been floundering lately. I’m actually a little surprised on that count, as I expected McCain to win the next debate.

I can’t wait to see how this plays out. If McCain really is suspending his campaign I suppose he won’t be discussing Obama in the press, or doing long speeches, or doing press conferences. After all, if you suspend your campaign you suspend it. It doesn’t count if you entrench yourself in Washington and snipe at your opponent from there.

Part of how it plays out of course depends on public opinion, media reaction, and the Obama campaign. I don’t think Obama will stop his campaign, because that would be playing McCain’s game, though I expect him to go for the vote (which is what McCain should be doing). After that the McCain campaign will decry Obama for “playing politics in a time of crisis”. But if they see that the media isn’t buying their line (and lately McCain has even FOX mad at him) and the voters aren’t either, the suspension will end rather quickly.

I don’t expect to stop hearing from McCain. He may say that he’s suspended his campaign, but I’m not buying. Not even because I don’t think it’s a principled stand, it’s mostly because I don’t believe McCain is a stupid guy. Not campaigning (not doing press appearances, speeches, statements etc.) and becoming yet another one of the hundreds of hands working on this issue in Washington, leaves the field open to Obama a little over a month before the election is insane.

As to whether it will work politically, I have no idea. I tend to doubt it, but in this election we’ve been surprised over and over again, so you never know.

[UPDATE]: Ahh, but of course…. From the AP report:

A senior McCain adviser, Mark Salter, said the campaign would suspend all advertising and campaign events until a workable deal is reached on the bailout proposal — but only if the Obama campaign agrees to do the same.

They are calling his bluff, knowing full well he won’t suspend his campaign, so they can spend the week accusing him of playing politics over policy.

Then there’s this:

The Obama campaign said in a statement that Obama had called McCain around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday to propose that they issue a joint statement in support of a package to help fix the economy as soon as possible. McCain called back six hours later and agreed to the idea of the statement, the Obama campaign said. McCain’s statement was issued to the media a few minutes later.

At the moment this is only the Obama campaign’s say-so, so it must be taken with a grain of salt. I would suppose that they have some credible evidence that this conversation took place, because otherwise McCain can simply deny it happened and no one will know the truth.