Ivory Tower

   Today’s musical dedication is to Republican presidential candidate and sometime senator John McCain: “Running Scared.” by Roy Orbison.

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   There’s little doubt that McCain either decided or took somebody’s bad advice that he might be able to score political points and at the same time avoid a face-off with the notoriously eloquent Barack Obama by declaring that the Wall Street crisis needed his full attention and he needed to stop campaigning until it was resolved, which meant he couldn’t participate in today’s scheduled debate. He asked his opponent to do the same.

   Great idea — after all, the strategy of going into seclusion worked so well for Jimmy Carter in 1980, didn’t it?

   Unfortunately for McCain, things didn’t work out as planned.

   First, Obama took advantage of the gift and said he wasn’t suspending anything. A real president has to be able to do more than one thing at once, he announced, scoring the free goal.

   Then, David Letterman spent much of Wednesday’s program deriding McCain, whose campaign suspension included canceling a scheduled appearance on the talk show.

   And of course, President Bush then invited McCain and Obama together to visit him and discuss the issue, a subtle reminder that McCain can do whatever he wants, but Bush is still the decider.

   Poor John. Nobody bought his line. Least of all Congress, which was the real decider. McCain is just one of 535 members, give or take a few, who had to vote on the president’s bailout proposal, and the deliberations weren’t very likely to take too long. Congress adjourns today, and few of them would be willing to stick around to haggle over the details of a little old economic patch job. After all, most of them are itching to get home and campaign for re-election. All House seats and a third of Senate positions are on the November ballot.

   Unfortunately for McCain, his campaign suspension came off as nothing more than an attempt to get out of the debate with Obama, giving the impression that he’s just running scared.

   It was a bad idea. After all, McCain became popular precisely for offering comments that weren’t always expected or wanted by the establishment. He would do better to get up on the stage with his opponent and just shoot from the hip. Obama can give solid, articulate responses; McCain can set himself apart by offering the kind of frank, impassioned talk that resonated so well with the public — that is, until somebody convinced him that he had to run the same kind of campaign that everybody else has used the past few decades: throw mud and avoid the issues.

   That’s the kind of advice McCain should be running from. He needs to take charge and not go into hiding. In other words, show the kind of confidence that shows as president he would know what to do, no matter what happens.

   You can’t run for president by running scared.