John McCain made a bold declaration Wednesday: He would ride into Washington on his white horse plane to save the union economy and was suspending his campaign — damn the consequences! Country before political ambition, and all that. But from what we can tell, there was little evidence of anything actually being suspended. Let’s see: Campaign manager Rick Davis dined with major fund-raisers in New York Wednesday night. McCain spoke at not-so-secret-admirer Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative Thursday morning. Sarah Palin visited ground zero and actually took questions from live human reporters, in person, which is arguably more in campaign mode than she’s ever been. McCain appeared on all three network newscasts last night. Meanwhile, though McCain claimed he was pulling down his television ads, reports showed that, at least in some places, they were still running, and the Obama campaign is saying that McCain is telling stations to put his ads back on by Saturday morning. And as CNN reports, “offices in half a dozen battleground states” were operating as normal yesterday, and “McCain staffers and surrogates took to the airwaves, some taking swipes at Barack Obama.” Taken altogether, doesn’t this kind of confirm the skepticism of critics who claimed McCain’s “suspension” was not much more than political theater? Indeed, McCain seemed to prove Barack Obama right: It is possible to run a campaign and work on the bailout at the same time.
