OK, Barry, careful now

By now everybody knows that Senator John McCain has suspended his presidential campaign to attend to business in Washington surrounding the nation’s economic woes.

Barack Obama rebuffed McCain [and McCain's request to postpone the scheduled debate], saying it’s “more important than ever” for the candidates to tell voters how they would deal with the crisis. He said they can work with Congress while campaigning. “It is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once,” Obama said.

Then there’s also this pesky Internet rumor that Barry is planning to drop Biden as vice presidential nominee–the Gaffe Master will fall ill, naturally–and replace him with Hillary Clinton.

Biden may very possibly be unaware of campaign history–who can tell anymore–but hopefully Obama is aware that:

Dropping Biden from the ticket would be a throwback to George McGovern’s shocker in 1972, when he replaced running mate Thomas Eagleton after it was learned that Eagleton had undergone electro-shock therapy for depression.

McGovern lost to President Nixon in a landslide, suggesting that seventh-inning lineup changes are not the best strategy for presidential candidates who want to shake things up.

Judson Berger points out that it may be a moot point, given that absentee ballots have already been sent out with all the–dare I say it–”current” nominee names included, and in some states deadlines for doing so have come and gone.

Still, I feel like Barry isn’t above trying to do something radical such as getting dates tweaked, given the state of the nation and crisis currently raging. In that instance my thought is that, as Obama was on about the need for presidential multi-tasking, he needs also to remember that difficult circumstances cannot be tweaked to escape them. Will he be able to change shirts to get out of crisis mode with Ahmadinejad? North Korea?

Certainly the story would be that Biden is too ill to go on, but everybody will know what fakery that really is, and I believe Obama knows it.

Update: Obama, the recalcitrant student:

[H]e wants to let everyone know that this is a “sufficiently important problem”. Sufficiently important how? Apparently, “sufficiently important” to issue press statements, but not “sufficiently important” to get back to work for a few days. What would constitute a problem “sufficiently important” enough for him to do that? Congress needs to address a $700 billion bailout that Obama has already stated will severely restrict his policy options if he wins the elections. Doesn’t he have a “sufficiently important” interest in that, either?

Obama has another problem with returning to Washington, one that received little attention in the analysis of McCain’s challenge yesterday. Obama has to raise $3 million each day in order to hit his target of $100 million a month. He needs to conduct fundraisers constantly in order to make that goal. Taking three or four days off the campaign trail means a potential loss of revenue for Obama, one he can ill afford at the moment. That’s a “sufficiently important problem” that would keep Obama out of Washington.

McCain won this round. He understood that the next leader of the nation had to put himself in a position of leadership in this crisis in order to have credibility. McCain took the initiative, while Obama had to return after being summoned like a recalcitrant student.

Obama prefers to be on the trail making money than doing the job he was elected to do. What else is new? Certainly not his sputtering attempt to make himself look good after his “call me if you need me” gaffe:

As I said before, I think that one of the things we have to determine is how we can be most helpful. It’s my sense that the most helpful thing we can do right now is, uh, to let everyone know this is a sufficiently important problem. I can be helpful, and I am prepared to be anywhere, anytime. So, uh, I think the message is, if I can be helpful, I am prepared to be there at any point.

Redundant, selfish, narcissistic. What other qualities in a president would the liberals like to see besides these?