Obama: Call me if you need me. [Update on Meeting with Bush]

Obama made a stunning gaffe in his press conference this afternoon. Responding to McCain suspending his campaign to address the economic crisis, Obama said that if they [Congress] need me, they’ll call me.

Yes, Obama wants to continue with his campaigning and the upcoming debate rather than show leadership and fulfill his role as Senator. In what has to be the quote of the day, if not the election, Obama said:

“Apparently, this was something that, you know, he was more decisive about…”—Barack Obama speaking about John McCain action to stop campaigning.

Wow! There could be no further contrast in leadership between these two men. McCain rolls up his sleeves and says ‘let’s get something done.’ And Obama says ‘call me if you need me.’

Update: Bush will meet with both candidates Thursday …

Yes, Obama went on to explain:

“I believe that we should continue to have the debate,” he said. “I think that it makes sense for us to present ourselves before the American people, to talk about the nature of the problems that we’re having in our financial system, to talk about how it relates to our global standing in the world, what implications it has for our national security, how it relates to critical questions, like the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“We’ve both got big planes. We’ve painted our slogans on the sides of them. They can get us from Washington, D.C., to Mississippi fairly quickly.”—Barack Obama as quoted by Shailagh Murray in the Washington Post.

When given an opportunity to serve his nation in a time of severe crisis, Barrack Obama decided that his own personal gain was more important.

Stunning!

Sen. Lindsey Graham just made a great set of remarks to Fox News’s “America’s Election HQ” host:

“We don’t want a debate! We want a solution. We’ve got 40 days to debate. We’ve been begging this guy to debate us for six months now. What we need is for the Congress to answer the call of Secretary Paulson and Ben Bernanke and Warren Buffett and every other smart person to not allow a financial PEARL HARBOR to happen.”

Host: Senator Obama has suggested that a president needs to be able to do a number of things at the same time …. like have a debate for example and be able to have his finger on the pulse of what is going on in Washington. Is he right about that?

Sen. Graham: I would think that if the president were overseas right now and talking to a foreign leader, they would get on a plane and come back home because the country is experiencing a financial crisis. If either one of these people were president, and they were overseas talking about some foreign policy matter, I hope they would have the good judgment to jump on a plane and come back to the United States and call an emergency session of the Congressional leaders to avoid what Warren Buffett calls a ‘financial Pearl Harbor’. That to me is what we need to do.

We have 40 days left to debate. We may not have but a few days left to protect American savings and financial institutions from collapse, and after the two days you’ve seen here in Congress of nothing but posturing, we’re running out of time.

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UPDATE via CNN’s Political Ticker at 8:21 p.m. ET:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush has asked both Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama to join him for a meeting at the White House Thursday afternoon to discuss the economic bailout plan, a White House officials said.

“The President called Sen. Obama tonight around 7:30 pm,” said Dana Perino, White House press secretary. “The president has invited the bicameral and bipartisan leadership, and the two senators running for president, to the White House tomorrow to work on driving to a bipartisan and timely solution.”

Obama’s campaign said in a statement that he has accepted the invitation. …