Will McCain actually be there?
I've missed what this postpone thing is all about.
McCain said he'd suspend campaigning until after the congress passes a bill to rescue the financial industry. He also asked Obama to stop campaigning and come with him to Washington to debate this bill. Obama refused. Then McCain asked President Bush to call Obama and request that Obama come to washington. Bush led Republicans in embracing McCain's gesture, as it were, and his call to Obama made it impossible for Obama to decline, so Obama agreed to come to Washington.
McCain also said the debate should be postponed, obviously hoping that his abrupt decision to suspend campaigning and delay Friday's debate will be viewed by the voting public as the kind of "country-first" bipartisan leadership he believes Americans want. It's sort of clever, but it may or may not work.
Obama said today that "it is going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once" and that McCain should still plan on flying to Oxford, Mississippi for tomorrow's debate. Governor Haley Barbour, a former GOP party chair, also wants the debate to continue. As do I.
but no one really knows what will happen yet. If McCain doesn't show, obviously there won't be a debate. Obama will no doubt do some focus-grouping before he decides whether to fly down there, because if Obama is obstinate, and shows up at Mississippi to debate, but McCain doesn't, either McCain will look like a wimpy dumbass, or he'll look more magnanimous than Obama. But we can't know which till it happens.
And the fate of the debate is really unclear just now. One possibility is that they reschedule for next Thursday, when Palin and Biden were originally scheduled to debate. Another is that this one just gets nixed. Another is that McCain's aides talk him in to doing it. That's my hope.
