What a farce the McCain campaign has turned into. Despite finding the time to speak at Bill Clinton's Global Initiative on Thursday morning, McCain has announced that he won't find the time to appear in the presidential debate on Friday. He is instead 'suspending' his campaign in order to return to Washington to assist in the Bush administration's $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. 'Suspending' the campaign, however, does not mean suspending his ads attacking Obama or halting the appearances of surrogates appearing on his behalf on Fox News. Rather, it simply seems to mean ducking out of the debate. Indeed, it's hard to decide which Republican has more to fear from the upcoming debates: McCain or Palin. Having veered from calling the economy 'fundamentally sound' to comparing the current economic crisis to the September 11 attacks, McCain would doubtless be put on the defensive in a debate held in this week's panicked environment. Moving the presidential debate to next Thursday would not only give McCain time to finally figure out how he wants to respond to the crisis and bailout, but it would have the added advantage of bumping the vice-presidential date off the calendar completely. Sarah Palin's obvious shakiness on matters of policy, which was on display again during her interview with Katie Couric, is undoubtedly a factor in the McCain campaign's calucations in trying to postpone both debates. Meanwhile, McCain's sudden interest in economics accomplished the very thing he professed he was seeking to overcome, injecting partisanship into negotiations which were proceeding smoothly without him. And for what? What contribution did he have to make? According to observers at the White House meeting, McCain sat silent while the White House negotiations that he had insisted upon fell apart. But what would he have said, anyway? By his own admission, McCain doesn't know much about the economy. He was there for a photo op, which he got, and also because he is desperate to minimize his differences with Obama regarding the economic meltdown. The politician in McCain—which is all there is left of the man now—realizes that the crisis has the potential to absolutely destroy his campaign, turning a close election into a rout. Indeed, it is this latest stunt, not the choice of Palin, which truly represents the McCain campaign's 'Hail Mary' pass. When he chose Palin as his running mate, McCain was actually in pretty decent shape in the polls. Choosing Palin wasn't an act of desperation, but rather an expression of McCain's faulty 'gut instinct,' a totally unnecessary risk which has backfired on him. 'Suspending' his campaign—which to McCain only means taking himself out of public view because he has nothing to say—is the actual 'Hail Mary' of this campaign because this time McCain really is on the brink of total default. Lacking ideas or even a coherent understanding of what is going on, McCain's strategy at this time is to avoid answering questions on the economy altogether while pretending to place himself above politics. McCain and Palin simply aren't ready for prime time, and they know it. Palin because she is ignorant and unprepared for the national stage, and McCain because the ideas and issues which have shaped his career—the Cold War and the Reagan Revolution—are no longer workable reference points for the problems facing the US. While Palin reminds me of an unprepared college student trying to BS her way through an answer she knows little about, McCain just seems desperate, stalling for time while he tries to figure out a response to developments which have passed him by.