COUNTRY LAST.

This post has been edited from its original version.

John McCain's latest effort to ensure that the campaign becomes a narrative of his personal heroism, rather than a referendum on the issues, is to "suspend" campaigning and postpone Friday's debate ostensibly to deal with the economic crisis. This is like a student caught cheating who demands that class be interrupted so he can finish the homework that was assigned yesterday, given that he hadn't bothered to read the bill as of yesterday. His call to put "Country First" just happens to occur a day after unfavorable polling and the revelation that his campaign manager Rick Davis has been apparently engaged in undisclosed lobbying on behalf of one of the very mortgage giants McCain identified as being part of "the culture of corruption and influence" in Washington. Most disconcerting is the idea that this is how McCain would run his administration. The American people cannot stop what they're doing whenever John McCain feels like he needs a time out. It's the president's job to be able to concentrate on more than one thing at a time without having a panic attack.

This is a transparent example of McCain putting his campaign before his country. And it isn't the first. It is no coincidence that whatever McCain believes to be America's interest is also in his own.

--A. Serwer