Declaring that it was time to “set politics aside,” Senator John McCain said Wednesday that he would temporarily stop campaigning and seek to delay Friday’s debate with Senator Barack Obama to return to Washington to help forge an agreement on a proposed $700 billion bailout of financial institutions before Congress.
The Obama campaign rejected the call by Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, to delay the debate, and aides noted that Mr. McCain only made the offer after Mr. Obama reached out to his opponent asking him to issue a joint statement calling for a bipartisan resolution to the financial crisis.
The political maneuvering came as the financial bailout continued to dominate Washington, the headlines and the concerns of ordinary Americans. On Wednesday evening, both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, accepted President Bush’s invitation to meet with him on Thursday to address the crisis.
Mr. McCain’s actions not only cast doubt on whether the highly anticipated debate would come off, but also thrust an unpredictable new element into the negotiations for the bailout, with some Democrats warning that Mr. McCain’s intervention could derail progress being made on the rescue package.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, said Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama should not return to Washington and inject presidential politics into the bailout negotiations.
“We need leadership, not a photo op,” a statement issued by Mr. Reid said.
But Republicans, eager for political cover from Mr. McCain on a bailout proposal that members of both parties see as deeply unpopular in the country, embraced his return. “The threats to Americans, and their homes, savings and retirements, is not a partisan problem, and it won’t be fixed with a partisan approach,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, who called Mr. McCain’s attempt to help forge a deal an “outstanding idea.”
Explaining his decision to reject Mr. McCain’s call to postpone their debate in Oxford, Miss., Mr. Obama cited the gravity of the nation’s financial crisis.
“It is my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess,” Mr. Obama said. “It is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once.”
Mr. McCain’s decision seeking to postpone the first debate was yet another unpredictable, daring step taken by his campaign over the last month: its selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as a vice-presidential candidate shook up the race in late August, and days later the campaign stripped down the first day of the Republican National Convention because of the threat of Hurricane Gustav.
In the midst of the confusion, officials with the Commission on Presidential Debates said that they were moving forward with the debate and that talks with the McCain campaign throughout the day had not persuaded them on Mr. McCain’s position. “We believe the public will be well served by having all of the debates go forward as scheduled,” the commission said.
The meeting with Mr. Bush on Thursday was precipitated by a call from Mr. McCain, who cast his request as a matter of urgent national priority. “Following Sept. 11, our national leaders came together at a time of crisis,” he told a small group of reporters, while reading the brief statement from a teleprompter, in a small ballroom at the Hilton New York hotel. “We must show that kind of patriotism now.”
Wednesday night, the two candidates issued the joint statement that Mr. Obama had requested, calling for bipartisan unity to solve the crisis.
“Now is a time to come together Democrats and Republicans in a spirit of cooperation for the sake of the American people,” the statement said. “The plan that has been submitted to Congress by the Bush administration is flawed, but the effort to protect the American economy must not fail.”
Mr. McCain made his decision to try to delay the debate as he has been struggling to find his political footing on the financial crisis and a number of recent polls showed that more Americans trust Mr. Obama to handle the economy than Mr. McCain. Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, has also come under scrutiny this week because of his ties to Freddie Mac, one of the mortgage giants at the heart of the credit crisis.
Mr. Reid’s opposition to Mr. McCain’s return was described as disingenuous by Mr. McCain’s advisers, who only hours earlier had said Mr. McCain was returning to Washington in part as a response to Mr. Reid. “Senator Reid last night made clear in his view that it was up to John McCain to provide leadership on this matter,” Steve Schmidt, a senior McCain campaign adviser, told reporters on Wednesday afternoon.
The debate on Friday was to focus on Mr. McCain’s perceived strength, foreign policy. Mr. McCain had not planned to devote large blocks of time to debate practice as did Mr. Obama, who was holing up with a tight circle of advisers at a hotel in Clearwater, Fla., on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to prepare. Mr. McCain had a preparatory session on Wednesday afternoon at the Morgan Library in Manhattan, but advisers said it had been interrupted by his decision, announced immediately afterward, to suspend his campaign.
Democrats were withering in their reaction to Mr. McCain’s decision.
“Now that we are on the verge of making a deal, John McCain airdrops himself in to help us make a deal,” said Representative Barney Frank, of Massachusetts and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. “Frankly, we are going to have to interrupt a negotiating session tomorrow between Democrats and Republicans on a bill where I think we are getting pretty close to troop down to the White House for a photo op.”
“What, does McCain think the Senate will still be working at 9 p.m. Friday?” Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania said in an interview, referring to the scheduled start time of the debate. “I think this is all political.”
Throughout the day, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama were locked in an unusual back-and-forth about the bailout and Mr. McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign. The exchange started with a morning telephone call from Mr. Obama to Mr. McCain to ask whether Mr. McCain would issue a joint statement on the government bailout plan. But Mr. McCain was not available to take the call, and the two did not connect until six hours later, about 2:30 p.m.
At that point, they had what the McCain campaign described as a 10-minute phone call, but the substance of it remained in dispute between the two campaigns. Mr. Schmidt of the McCain campaign said Mr. McCain told Mr. Obama that he was going to suspend his campaign and return to Washington and that he had called Mr. Bush to ask that he convene a meeting on the crisis.
But Mr. Obama was left with the impression from the conversation that Mr. McCain was “mulling over” suspending the debate as an option, not a final decision.
“Apparently, this was something that, you know, he was more decisive about in his own mind,” Mr. Obama told reporters.
Mr. Obama conceded being taken by surprise by the afternoon announcement from Mr. McCain, which Obama aides said occurred about 10 minutes after the phone conversation between the two men.
Mr. Obama stopped short of suggesting that Mr. McCain was playing politics by calling for a delay in their first presidential debate, and he continued with the same low-key tone he has employed throughout the financial crisis. But Mr. Obama did say with a glint of humor that both he and Mr. McCain were capable of engaging in the debate and negotiations in Congress at the same time.
“If it turns out that we need to be in Washington, we’ve both got big planes — we’ve painted our slogans on the sides of them,” Mr. Obama said. “They can get us from Washington, D.C., to Mississippi fairly quickly.”
Two members of the Commission on Presidential Debates, the nonpartisan group that has sponsored the debates since 1988, said Wednesday that they were pursuing a strategy of trying to force Mr. McCain’s hand by having the full commission release a strongly worded statement saying the debate would go forward as planned.
The commission members noted that past debates had been held during moments of crisis, like as the attack on the destroyer Cole during the 2000 debates, and said they believed both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama could follow through on their commitment to participate in Friday night’s debate while exercising their duties as senators.
“Our role is not to play referee on their involvement in or concern about the bailout talks, but to hold a debate that all sides have agreed to,” said one commission member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because members had agreed not to speak beyond the commission statement released Wednesday. “At this point, we see no reason to cancel the debate.”
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