Americas

Americas

U.S. presidential candidate John McCain suspends campaign

25 September 2008 09:24 (UTC +04:00)

Washington â€“ APA. Democrat Barack Obama rebuffed White House rival John McCain’s call to postpone the first presidential debate, and implied his Republican rival was playing politics at a time of crisis, APA reports quoting AFP.
"What I’m planning to do right now is to debate on Friday," the Democrat told reporters here ahead of Friday’s scheduled encounter in Mississippi, also indicating that he planned to maintain his campaign activity.
"With respect to the debates, it’s my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess," he said.
Explaining that he had first reached out to McCain early Wednesday to forge a joint statement on the financial crisis, Obama indicated that McCain had jumped the gun by announcing his surprise decision to put his campaign on hold.
McCain had agreed to the statement but in an afternoon telephone call, he also suggested a joint trip by the White House contenders to Washington to meet with leaders in Congress and perhaps President George W. Bush, Obama said.
The Illinois senator said he wanted the statement out first, and while their staffs were thrashing out the wording, "when I got back to the hotel, he had gone on television to announce what he intended to do."
The Democrat said he was ready to return to Washington at any time if needed by congressional leaders as they thrash out a 700-billion-dollar economic bailout package.
"What I think is important though is that we don’t suddenly infuse Capitol Hill with presidential politics at a time when we’re in the middle of some very delicate and difficult negotiations," he said in a veiled dig at McCain.
"My attitude is we need to be focussed on solving the problem ... but I think it is also important that we communicate to the American people where we need to go in getting us out of this situation," the Democrat said.
"I think it’s possible to do both. I believe that we should continue to have the debate," he stressed, after debate organizers said they were pressing ahead with their planning for Friday.
"I think that it makes sense for us to present ourselves before the American people to talk about the nature of the problems that we’re having in our financial system, to talk about how it relates to our global standing in the world," Obama added.
"And you know, obviously if it turns out that we need to be in Washington, we’ve both got big planes. We’ve painted our slogans on the sides of them. They can get us from Washington DC to Mississippi fairly quickly."
Although McCain said he was acting in a spirit of bipartisanship, senior Democrats lobbed criticism at the Republican as polls showed Obama surging on the back of the financial tumult.
Obama’s elder senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, contrasted McCain’s abrupt announcement to his declaration early last week that the US economy was fundamentally "strong."
"With polls showing his campaign is at its weakest, Senator McCain’s decision may have less to do with the drop in the Dow Jones (share) average and more to do with a decline in the Gallup poll," Durbin said.

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid also rebuffed McCain’s intervention as a political gimmick, in a telephone conversation with the Republican contender, ABC News reported.
"We need leadership, not a campaign photo op," the top Democrat said in a statement.