John McCain might be wishing he hadn’t stood up David Letterman as the first visible act of his “campaign suspension.”

After establishing in detail McCain’s history as a war hero and his lack of animosity toward him, Dave asks, “What happened to that guy?” From there, it just gets better and better, with Letterman filling the time he would have spent interviewing McCain instead wondering what’s going on inside McCain headquarters. He even gets a little help toward the end from Keith Olbermann.

Letterman: It makes me believe something’s going haywire with the campaign…Here’s what you do when you’re running, ah, for campaign in the middle of an economic crisis and it’s about to crater…Here’s what you do. You’re a senator. You handle what you need to handle. Don’t suspend your campaign. You let your campaign go on, shouldered by your vice presidential nominee. That’s what you do. You don’t quit. Or is that really, is that really a good thing to do?

Paul Schaeffer: We don’t know.

Letterman: See what I’m saying? This is a guy who doesn’t have an ounce of quit in him. So all of a sudden we’re suspending the campaign? …You say I gotta get back to Washington to save this country — good for you — and while I’m gone, campaigning in my stead is my great running mate from the state of Alaska, Sarah Palin. And she comes out and campaigns. What happened there? What’s the problem? Where is she? Why isn’t she doing that?

Paul Schaeffer: She is a good looking babe. You gotta admit that.

Letterman: (laughing) Exactly! That’s the point I’m trying to make. So I don’t know, but you heard it here first: this just doesn’t smell right. This is not the way a tested hero behaves.

Left: African Witch Hunter Rev. Muthee prays over Palin; Right: “Countdown” reports on Palin’s claim that Muthee’s blessing helped her become governor

Transcript from the Sept. 19 edition of “Countdown” on MSNBC:

[…]

Earlier, we speculated that John McCain had suspended his campaign in order to postpone, perhaps indefinitely, the debate between his vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, and the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, because Palin was not ready.

Another possibility is that the McCain campaign is trying to deflect attention from a new report in the National Enquirer that appears to confirm that Palin had an affair 12 years ago with her husband’s business partner:

No less than three members of the man’s family including one by sworn affidavit have claimed that Sarah Palin engaged in an extramarital affair with hus­band Todd’s former business partner, Brad Hanson.

These sources have named Hanson as Palin’s secret love, and say their affair nearly wrecked both their marriages.

Hanson owned a snowmobile dealership with Palin’s husband Todd, who immediately dissolved the partnership after he heard stories about the affair, which occurred around 1996, according to the sources. At the time, Palin was mayor of Wasilla.

Palin has vehemently de­nied cheating on her hus­band, and Hanson insisted to The NATIONAL ENQUIRER that he was never romantically in­volved with the 44-year-old Republican vice presiden­tial candidate.

However, Hanson family insider, Jim Burdett, has gone on the record and passed a rigorous polygraph test, revealing de­tails of the affair to The NATIONAL ENQUIRER in a world exclusive interview.

Burdett is a former brother-in-law of Hanson’s estranged wife Carolyn’s brother, Craig Batton, and still speaks with many family members.

Of course, no one takes the the Enquirer seriously, but their recent track record does include a report that John Edwards had an affair that appeared dubious at first but then proved to be accurate.

H/t: Commenter JS

Diageo/Hotline tracking poll:

Obama/Biden 47%
McCain/Palin 43%
Undec 8%

– Obama’s closed the gap among white women. The candidates are now tied 45-45%; one week ago (in the survey completed 9/17), McCain led this group by 10 points (49-39%).

– The enthusiasm gap has grown in Obama’s favor: 59% of Obama supporters are enthusiastic about their ticket, while just 47% of McCain supporters say the same. Yesterday, the poll showed a 10% Obama lead.

– McCain captures 23% of RVs who disapprove of Pres. Bush.

Is the real intent of the suspension of the McCain campaign yesterday a ploy to delay or even cancel Sarah Palin’s vice presidential debate with Joe Biden next week? Why else would the campaign suddenly start negotiating the debate schedule, which has been set for months, by asserting that McCain will unilaterally cancel the first presidential debate tomorrow unless Congress and the Bush administration reach a deal on the Wall Street bailout plan?
If Palin is not ready to debate Joe Biden now, how can she be ready to be vice president in 40 days?
Late yesterday, after John McCain announced he was suspending his campaign and returning to Washington to work on a deal to resolve the Wall Street crisis — despite the fact that he’d been absent from Congress for the 10 days or so since the crisis broke, and despite the fact that Capitol Hill negotiators were close to working out a deal without his input — his campaign operatives announced that McCain would skip the debate with Barack Obama tomorrow night if a deal had not been reached on the bailout plan.

Within hours, if not minutes, McCain aides then floated the idea of re-scheduling the debates around their own artificial delay by postponing the vice presidential debates, which had been scheduled for a week from today:

[…]