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Senator John McCain has announced that he will be suspending his presidential campaign in order to focus on the Wall Street financial crisis. |
09/25/08
This is a bold move and likely will either boost Senator McCain's chances or doom them entirely. His critics will say he is running scared, although that seems unlikely — the debate was to have been on foreign policy, which is widely acknowledged as one of McCain's strong suits.
McCain himself has gone on the record as saying he'd rather lose an election than a war, and given that the current financial crisis has the potential to be more damaging to the nation than several small-scale wars, his call to put off Friday's debate could be seen by some as putting country first.
In any event, McCain's gambit has certainly put Obama in a bind. If the latter accepts McCain's call to put off the debate, he will be seen as a follower, whereas if he rejects McCain's proposal, the McCain campaign will doubtlessly accuse Obama of putting politics above all else.
Of course, the political implications are fun to speculate about, but the legal implications are interesting as well. What exactly does it mean to ''suspend'' a campaign? Will McCain be allowed to run ads until he ''un-suspends''? Apparently, he will not be running ads for the time being.
And what happens if Senator Obama decides not to let the debate be postponed? Will McCain show up? Does he have to show up?
The legal industry is of course very interested in the big bailout debate now occurring in Congress. Hundreds of government lawyers, at a minimum, are highly concerned, as are probably the majority of attorneys in New York, London, and other major financial centers. For your average solo practitioner in Casper, Wyoming, though, it might not matter so much — yet.
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