McCain to Participate in Debate

After announcing that he would not attend tonight's debate unless a decision was reached by Congress regarding the proposed bill that would grant $700 billion in bailouts to banks and large corporations, John McCain decided to go back on his word.

He was very firm and resolute when he announced his vow not to attend the debate on Wednesday, and promptly took off for Washington late the next morning.

But when he arrived in Washington, ready and rearing to solve the nation's economic woes, he was as quiet as a mouse almost the entire time. He met briefly with Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Minority Leader John Boehner, but did not go too in depth at all in the process--or so it seemed from an outsider's point of view. He also has not given any indication whether he supports Boehner's plan or Treasury Secretary Paulson's plan to help solve the crisis.

But earlier today, his campaign announced that he would be attending tonight's debate. In a statement released this afternoon, the McCain campaign announced that enough progress had been made in Congress (because of him?) that he felt it was okay to attend the debate and un-suspend his campaign.

Late this morning, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Chris Dodd--chairman of the Senate banking committee--appeared at a press conference together. Reid said that the addition of presidential politics (a.k.a. John McCain) into the Senate and House negotiations was not helping the process, in fact it was harming it.

So basically, the the negotiations in the Senate made little to no progress, but McCain decided to scram anyway, going against his vow that he would not debate Barack Obama unless the country's economic woes were on the fast track to a tangible solution. And he may have even done some harm and caused a delay in the negotiations.

And on top of that, McCain's campaign mistakenly released an internet add that read "John McCain Wins Debate!" several hours before he officially announced that he would even be attending. This shows that it was intention to attend the debate all along, and that it was in fact a political ploy.

Although I'm still not sure (along with most Americans) what the true intentions reasons behind this move were. But in my opinion, this whole debacle made John McCain--who is normally a very even-handed man, even on the campaign trail--look desperate and erratic.

And meanwhile, Obama has played this whole thing perfectly, calling McCain out on his bluff and staying cool, calm and collected during this whole process. He's even looking a little presidential!

When I'm watching the debate tonight, I will look to see if the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, will ask McCain what the hell he was doing the past 48 hours, or even if he just hints at it. The main topic of the debate was supposed to be foreign policy and national security, but I imagine we will see a good deal of questions regarding the economy and where the candidates specifically stand on the issue after the recent developments on Wall Street.

After all, that is far and away what the American people want to hear about tonight.