Obama Will Make Debate A Townhall If McCain Doesn't Show Barack Obama is committed to hosting a public, televised event Friday night in Mississippi even if John McCain does not show up, an official close to the Obama campaign tells the Huffington Post. In McCain's absence, the Senator is willing to make the scheduled debate a townhall meeting, a one-on-one interview with NewsHour's Jim Lehrer, or the combination of the two, the official said. Such a course of action could make life incredibly difficult for McCain, who has called for the suspension of the debate in light of the current economic crisis. Should he stay in Washington D.C. -- if a bailout is not completed by then -- and let Obama alone reach tens of millions of television viewers? A lot, of course, depends upon what the debate commission decides to do. At this point in time, there is no indication that they are going to postpone the affair, as the McCain campaign has asked. Separately, on Thursday, Obama himself said he was intending to go to Oxford, Miss for the scheduled debate and called on McCain to be there with him. "The American people deserve to hear directly from myself and Sen. McCain about how we intend to lead our country," Obama said. "The times are too serious to put our campaign on hold, or to ignore the full range of issues that the next president will face." Meanwhile, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said on Thursday that he expected the debate to go forward as planned. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/25/obama-will-make-debate-a_n_129250.html
McCain is screwed either way. Showing up at this point makes him look like a fool. A no show would only be worse.
I'm sure McCain backers will see this in his favor. It demonstrates that Obama cares more about his campaign then the plight of the financial markets. But how will undecideds react?
Not sure how that works when Obama will be in Washington today, tomorrow and all weekend except to fly down for the debate.
Well according to Sens. Dodd and Bennett its basically all over - the Committee has agreed on tarp - so what is McCain going to do this weekend? Make copies of the bill for all the committee members? What an idiot. Talk about backfire.
Maybe he'll actually read it (which he had not done with the plan put forth over the weekend as of Tuesday).
if i were obama, i would say they didn't want mccain around screwing things up so they got a deal done, hilarious he played this thing terribly, and sarah's telling katie that they are waiting for his leadership, what a joke of a campaign
It will depend on what arrangements McCain has made in the time slot that the debates were scheduled. If he portrays himself as doing something exceedingly patriotic and "maverick", that could play well with his base no matter how much we roll our eyes.
The debate will happen. McCain "blinked", if you see it that way. This was incredibly poor gamesmanship by McCain's campaign. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26885268/
McCain indicated that if a resolution was passed before the debate the he would attend. Even if the bill hasn't been passed, he could claim that it's so far along that he isn't needed at that moment and can afford to leave Washington to attend the debate. Then he can still claim how he was willing to put "Country First" instead of "Campaign First".
Not so fast my friends. The Bill still needs to be spell checked, printed, and send to copy for printing. We need a maverick like McCain to make sure the said actions get completed in a timely, bi-partisan manner.
I don't think his excuse of "I quit my campaign and made a huge deal for absolutely no reason...but I'd still like to postpone the VP debate" will probably fly.
