McCain critiques are already cropping up all over the place.

We are already starting to critiques of McCain's move crop up - take Drudge's leak of Letterman:

David Letterman tells audience that McCain called him today to tell him he had to rush back to DC to deal with the economy.

Then in the middle of the taping Dave got word that McCain was, in fact just down the street being interviewed by Katie Couric. Dave even cut over to the live video of the interview, and said, "Hey Senator, can I give you a ride home?"

Earlier in the show, Dave kept saying, "You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves." And he joked: "I think someone's putting something in his metamucil."


There is more at Drudge.

Big gambles either lead to big payoffs or big disasters. Stuff like this - when combined with critiques from the National Review and the Senate Majority Leader - doesn't bode very well for John McCain. To be fair, he did get rousing acclaim from Gingrich, and some are saying that this is a bold move that recasts McCain as in control.

The problem is, McCain has spent a lot of his political capital with the media, and that's where this current battle will be won or lost. I don't know that McCain will be able to defend this decision under media scrutiny, especially now that he's burned so many bridges with the press.

There were many reasons why my piece yesterday focused on why Obama should make a move like this, and why I largely glossed over the possibility of McCain doing it. We're already seeing some of them. I'm a bit surprised at how swiftly the critiques of his move have popped up - as I do think on the surface, this is something that appears to be a reasonable thing to do. But I think McCain's big mistake was choosing to "suspend the campaign" and call for the delay of the debate. It makes it look as though he can't do two things at once - when instead, he simply could have kept the campaign going and returned to Washington for a few days. Obama reacted masterfully to this move - and immediately put McCain on the defensive for a move that was meant offensively.