Usually when one hears of a candidate suspending their campaign, it is during the primaries, and it means they have not abandoned politics, but are in a holding pattern until the convention.  We saw this play out with Hillary and all the others. Such a suspension is a strategic move in politics, and it is not intended to bring a halt to the political process.

What McCain did in 'suspending his campaign' is something quite different, especially if we take him at his word, rather than characterizing his 'suspension' as a wily political gambit.  McCain said he was suspending his campaign, but advocating that Obama should do the same, which means he presented it not as a political strategy, but as the indeterminate end of the political process.  He did this saying that the welfare of the nation called for him to do this.

If we are to believe him, the difference between a typical candidate's campaign 'suspension' and McCain's is this: McCain was attempting treason.  The political process -- however ugly, mud-slinging and ignoble it may be -- is a process at the very core of democracy without which democratic elections become a sham.  You can take the high road or low road, but to say that circumstances require all roads be abandoned, as McCain's suspension proposes, is to use circumstance to undermine democracy itself.  And that is treason, not 'petty treason' like Benedict Arnold, but structural treason against the foundation of our polis.

Is McCain a traitor?  He is if we take him to be sincere, yes.  But, of course we all know that he's utterly disingenuous in his 'high-minded' appeal to country before campaign.  So, in a sort of 'inversion of the world,' as McCain casts himself higher into the stratosphere of self-congratulatory civic-mindedness, we know, in fact, that he's debasing himself as only a desperate and bottom-feeding politico can.