McCain suspends campaign to "work on the economy"

From McCain's statements today-

Tomorrow morning, I will suspend my campaign and return to Washington after speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative. I have spoken to Senator Obama and informed him of my decision and have asked him to join me.

I am calling on the President to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself. It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem.

We must meet as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans, and we must meet until this crisis is resolved. I am directing my campaign to work with the Obama campaign and the commission on presidential debates to delay Friday night’s debate until we have taken action to address this crisis.

I'm not sure exactly what the McCain folks are up to with this choice. Neither Obama nor McCain is on the Finance or Banking committees- so neither of them is directly involved with the bailout. Also, both have staff on the Hill (who in any event would be doing most of the work) keeping tabs on what's going on and advancing the candidates' positions. There are also 533 other members of Congress already working on the bailout, so it's hard to imagine how having McCain and Obama there actually helps anything.

From a political perspective, I think it's a mixed bag. I don't see how Obama avoids agreeing to this... McCain could beat him over the head with "I'd rather lose an election than crash the economy" for the rest of the race, and more importantly would be seen as "doing something" about the crisis while Obama "played politics" even if McCain's contributions were negligible.

On the plus side for Obama, I'm not sure how putting the race in stasis for some amount of time benefits McCain. With only 5 weeks left, and Obama reasserting a lead in national and battleground polls, McCain needs every opportunity, particularly the debates, to change the direction of the race. If McCain were ahead, I'd say this was a genius move... at almost 4 points behind in the RCP average, maybe not so much.

Now maybe this move is the very game-changer that McCain is looking for- heightening his "selflessness" and "service" and trying to bring up his poll numbers on handling the economy. A lot depends on what Obama does, and whether the media decides this is a cynical ploy. On that end, it would have worked a lot better if McCain hadn't completely blown his credibility with the press.