Now he’s saying that Barack Obama also suspended his campaign when John McCain did:
“[Bush] didn’t ask me to suspend my campaign,” said McCain. “I suspended my campaign — as did Senator Obama — to come back to Washington because the President had told me that we were in a world financial collapse. That’s why I did what I did. I always said that consistently.”
It’s true that Obama went to Washington to join McCain, Bush, and congressional leaders for a White House meeting on the crisis, which, according to multiple accounts, was engineered by McCain. But unlike McCain, Obama never announced he was suspending his campaign. Quite the opposite, in fact: After McCain’s announcement, Obama said he still planned to show up for the presidential debate that Friday, arguing that a president needed to be able to do two things at once.
Asked whether he remembered things the way McCain did, Steve Hildebrand, who ran the Obama campaign’s field operation, told TPM: “Nope. We proceeded directly ahead, pointing out along the way that McCain was incapable of doing two things at once.”
PAST CONTRIBUTOR.